Niche Down.

Copyright 2018
By Christopher Lochhead and Heather Clancy.
All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN: 978-0-692-15679-7
 STRAP YOURSELVES IN!

Hello to our legendary friends near and far! The philosophy behind this book
was a catalyst for legendary innovators, entrepreneurs, marketers, athletes,
investors and other large-than-life visionaries who have designed legendary
lives and businesses.

As a grateful thank you for supporting our work, we invite you to download
free transcripts of two mind-bending conversations.

The inspirational technologist Shaku Atre rose from second-class citizen in

an Indian village to prominent posts at IBM, the FBI and AT&T. She’s an
internationally renowned software expert, and she’s a force for good in
microlending — empowering thousands of women around the world to
follow in her footsteps.

The legendary Hal Elrod is creator of one of the fastest growing communities
in existence — one surrounding his bestseller Miracle Morning, a system for
starting your day to center and ground yourself, setting the tone for your next
24 hours. Hal is host and creator of Achieve Your Goals, one of the top
podcasts in the world.

But there’s more to his journey. This extraordinary author, thinker,

motivational speaker and cancer survivor has thrived against incredible odds.
His story will inspire you and hopefully serve as a guidepost pointing toward
your own path into a legendary future.

http://nichedownbook.com/thankyou
 YOU ROCK!

Christopher:

To my mum and dad, Jacqueline (Leeke) Lochhead and Bruce Lochhead,

I love you.

Heather:

To my mother, who defied convention to make her mark in the world; my

father, who taught me the value of standing up for my convictions; and my
husband Joe, the non-conformist to whom I have entrusted my heart. Love
you with all my soul.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Strap Yourselves In!

Dedication (a.k.a. You Rock!)

Foreword

Introduction The Odd Couple

1: Be Different, Become Legendary
2: Fall In Love With The Problem
3: Be Known For One Thing You Can Own
4: Go Forth And Niche Down
5: It Takes Courage To Be Legendary

Meet Legends & Losers

Acknowledgements (a.k.a. Thank You For Letting Us Be Us)

About The Authors

 FOREWORD
My life was transformed when I niched down.

After a successful career in sales with the biggest cutlery company in the
United States and Canada (Cutco), I decided to reinvent myself as an author,
speaker, and life coach.

Once I got started, I did pretty well.

But, I had a problem. In a sea of thousands of authors, speakers and life

coaches, I didn’t stand out.

I was one of many ex-sales folk serving up tips for how to achieve more, win
more deals, and generate more qualified leads. Blah, blah, blah.

I didn’t let it get me down. My rule, which I learned during my knife-

wielding Cutco career: “When things don’t go your way, you can feel bad
about it, but for five minutes. If you can’t change it, move on.”

So I wrote my book, The Miracle Morning, inspired by what I learned from

the horrific car accident that literally (albeit briefly) claimed my life in 1999
and the profoundly difficult financial crisis I suffered a decade later during
the Great Recession.

Here’s my idea: I believe that what we do first thing in our day affects the
whole day. If you can change your morning by getting up an hour earlier, you
can profoundly affect the next 23 hours. And if you can change your days,
you can change your entire life.
It was a different idea than what other motivational experts were espousing,
and I evangelized this philosophy everywhere I could. Because I believe in it
and live it myself. Once a few thousand people understood The Miracle
Morning mantra, the idea tipped — it became the sort of touchstone belief
system that can guide people through all manner of life phases and choices.

Today, The Miracle Morning is an international bestseller that has been

translated in 27 languages and that more than 500,000 people, in 70
countries, practice daily.

The philosophy behind it has also become a franchise that I’ve been able to
help apply to all sorts of different social and business communities. There are
close to a dozen specialized versions that I’ve co-authored with friends and
colleagues, such as The Miracle Morning for Entrepreneurs, The Miracle
Morning for Salespeople, The Miracle Morning for Parents and Families,
The Miracle Morning for College Students, and many others.

Now, I’m no longer just a good generic motivational speaker, author and
coach.

I’m known as The Miracle Morning guy.

Be known for a niche that you own.

This is a powerful idea. One that transforms how people think about their
lives, careers and business ventures.

Niche Down is a “life hack” of life hacks.

Here’s why.

Most of the people we admire the most were different in some tangible way.

Think about the entrepreneurs, scientists, executives, explorers, musicians,

athletes, teachers, artists, parents, political leaders, authors, speakers, actors
and creators that you most love.

They broke new ground.

They were original.

Unique.

They stood out because of the path they chose, deliberately.

They did not find their place in the world, they made their place in the world.
They told the world how to think about them. They figured out how to stand
out in a world that teaches us to color inside the lines and fit in. And as a
result, they made a big impact.

My story speaks truth to the thesis underlying Niche Down, the idea that
being different is the best way to become legendary. I have become known
because of the niche that I own. And that has made all the difference in both
my life and career.

This is the rare book that describes a life-changing idea and prescribes the
practical steps required to implement the idea.

More than just a book, you’re holding a guide to a legendary life and
business.

Hal Elrod

International best-selling author of The Miracle Morning series of

motivational books and host of the “Achieve Your Goals” podcast
 INTRODUCTION
THE ODD COUPLE
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, legendary counterculture novelist

My name is Christopher Lochhead, and I was thrown out of school at 18 for

being stupid.

For me, entrepreneurship was a way out, not a way up.

That is to say, starting a business was a way out of a life of struggle.

At 21, I found out I was dyslexic.

They never caught it in school.

And it seems, like a lot of entrepreneurs I know, I have shades of bipolar

disorder and a handful of other learning differences. I call it “dysfucklia.”

So at 18, my options were:

Shave guys’ balls for a living. (My mum had gotten me a job at the Montreal
General Hospital as an orderly.)

Or start a company.

So, I started a company.

My friend Jack Hughes was working for a small software company at the
dawn of the personal computer age. He convinced me to join him in
cofounding a training and consulting company focused on helping
corporations embrace this exciting new platform.

Like so many “small e” entrepreneurs1, I had no money, no experience and no

relationships.

I did have a big dream and massive drive to — as my mother says — “make
something of yourself.”

For me, entrepreneurship was a way out, not a way up.

Growing up in a working-class family, raised by a single mother, my early

life was a mix of struggle and lots of love. My mother, Jackie, worked her tail
off. She always made sure we were taken care of. While my parents were not
together in the traditional sense, my dad Bruce, was, and is, a big part of my
life. I grew up surrounded by two loving parents and three loving
grandparents.

After thrashing around in Canada’s personal-computer, software startup

world, I sold my small consulting business to a Silicon Valley software
company. There I was, a lucky 28-year-old bastard working as head of
marketing for a publicly-traded technology business in the Mecca of
Northern California.

I was living a dream.

I did two more public-company chief-marketing-officer gigs, served on a few

boards. And after Mercury Interactive, an enterprise software company, was
sold to Hewlett-Packard for $4.5 billion in 2006, I retired as an operating
executive. I was 38.

The next 10 years I spent as an advisor, investor type. And with three very
smart guys, I co-wrote Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators
Create and Dominate Markets, published by Harper Collins.

Now I’m having a blast as a podcaster and writer. As someone with

disfucklia, writing and reading don’t come easily for me. And I’ve always
preferred to collaborate with amazing people versus being a lone ranger.

Heather Clancy is a person and journalist I have admired and respected for
years. When I was young, coming up in the tech world, I read her columns
and commentary religiously. As a kid with no education, I had to find non-
traditional ways to learn. She was one of a handful of journalists who
literately taught me the business.

To say that working with Heather Clancy is a life thrill is an understatement.

My motivation for wanting to do this with her is simple. To help people

design a legendary business and a legendary life.

In 2016, as Play Bigger was coming out, I read a story in The Wall Street
Journal that knocked me on my ass. The headline screamed, “The Crisis in
American Entrepreneurship.” I thought everyone and their dog were starting
a business.

It turns out that’s not true.

The data says, we are at the one of the lowest levels of entrepreneurship in
American history.

Being an entrepreneur or being entrepreneurial in your career is a very

powerful thing. This mindset puts you in the driver seat of the bus of life vs.
feeling like you’re under the bus.

My deep-seated wish is that this book makes a difference to you. I hope it

helps you make a unique and powerful place in the world. I hope it makes
some of the “losery” you experience along the way a little easier to take.
Because there truly is no such thing as a legend who isn’t also a loser.

And most importantly, my desire is that this book enables you to focus your
life on the exponential value of what makes you different versus the
incremental value of what makes you better.

And I hope you have as much fun reading this as we did writing it for you.

Christopher Lochhead

June 2018

Santa Cruz, CA

My name is Heather Clancy, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I found my
niche in the field of journalism by accident. Twice.

I always knew I wanted to be a writer. That was a given from the time I used
to huddle under the covers with a flashlight, devouring fantasy fiction after I
was supposed to be asleep.

Back when I started my career in New York City with a newswire service,
hacks who specialized in writing about businesses — rather than celebrities
or city hall — were uncommon. People thought the beat was boring. No one
wanted to cover IBM’s new computers (yawnsville!) or a socially awkward,
young software geek named Bill Gates (a flash in the pan!)

But because I survived an internship in the marketing department of another

kinda-cool tech startup, Apple Computer, during the summer it very publicly
fired cofounder Steve Jobs, the editors sent the cub reporter to do the deed
whenever the nerds stormed Manhattan. That would be me.
I spent the next 20 years at the epicenter of the information-technology
revolution, chronicling standards fights and takeovers and stock options, oh
my! On the side, I took freelance assignments to write about all manner of
entrepreneurs — from toymakers to dinnerware designers. Because, they
were fascinating and independent and creative and far more daring than I
was. You could say I lived their lives vicariously.

When the print media world contracted, and my position at one of the tech
industry’s biggest trade publications went poof in 2007, I niched down again.

That’s when I made a conscious decision to seek out and chronicle

companies that treat natural resources like fresh water, the oceans, soil and
the air we breathe as something precious, something worth conserving for
future generations.

My thesis: you don’t have to pillage or pollute to be profitable.

And I’m gratified to say that some of the world’s largest companies —
including the likes of Apple, General Motors, Procter & Gamble and
Unilever — are embracing that idea by embracing business practices shaped
less by short-term financial interests and more by the desire to create an
enterprise that will be sustainable over the long term. Let’s just say, that I
have no shortage of material.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I met Christopher. He’d probably be my

polar opposite if you made us take side-by-side personality tests. I shy away
from chaos, he thrives on its energy. I pick my words pretty deliberately,
while he’s not afraid to blurt out what’s on his mind. But from the first time I
interviewed him, probably 20 years ago, I knew I had found a kindred spirit.

So, when Christopher asked me to co-author this book, I was simultaneously

terrified, intrigued and excited as fuck. (Sorry, mom, he’s wearing off on
me.) Over the years, at least a half-dozen other people that I respect and
admire have asked me to tell their stories. And I’ve said “No” every single
time because the topic didn’t speak to my heart. But I found myself
galvanized by Christopher’s straightforward thesis: that becoming legendary
— either in life or in business — was a function of declaring and defining a
unique niche. And that this applied not just for massive technology
companies that professors love writing about, but for the small businesses
that live down the street from you and me. The more I looked for evidence,
the more I found it. I became compelled to help him tell that story.

OK, enough about us.

If you have read Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators
Create and Dominate Markets (Harper Collins, 2016) some of the ideas on
the following pages will sound familiar. For Christopher, Play Bigger and the
concept of “category design” are a big part of his life’s work.

A columnist for the business magazine, Forbes, says about Play Bigger: “If
there’s a playbook for building the next Google, Facebook or Amazon — this
is it.”

Niche Down exists for a different purpose — to explore how individuals,

solopreneurs and small, entrepreneurial businesses can use category design to
create their own niche and create a legendary career or business … or both.

If Play Bigger is for “Big E” entrepreneurs trying to invent the next Google,
Niche Down is dedicated to “small e” entrepreneurs who want to create
massively successful smaller, independent businesses.

And now, without further ado, in the words of the legendary punk rocker
Joey Ramone, “Hey ho, let’s go!”

Heather Clancy

June 2018
From a small-ish hamlet in Northern New Jersey

1 I made up the terms “small e” and “Big E” entrepreneurs to distinguish between founders who start
with nothing and founders who are able to raise venture-capital money and have the backing of
experienced investors and company builders.
 1.
BE DIFFERENT, BECOME
LEGENDARY
“Most people and most companies are living inside someone else’s thinking.”
— Bix Bickson2, aka the “Future Hacker,”legendary executive mentor

Entrepreneurs Build Our World

For some people, entrepreneurship is a way up in life.

And for others, it’s a way out.

No matter the motivation, new and small business ventures are the lifeblood
of the U.S economy.3

That is not fake news.

Entrepreneurs built your hometown and family-owned ventures — the most

successful of which have probably been around for multiple generations.

These enterprises are the heart of your community. They are where you
gather with friends and neighbors over a meal or a milkshake or a mojito. Or
three.

These outfits are the donors supporting local schools and sports teams with
coaches, equipment and new uniforms. They are the angels stepping up in
times of crisis with food, water, blankets and shoulders to lean on.

We’ll bet you vividly remember the local merchants who shaped your
childhood.

For Heather, it’s Jimmy the Fish, the quiet African-American solopreneur
who made weekly, door-to-door deliveries of fresh flounder and cod in rural
New Jersey. Jimmy was non-denominational, but he recognized the value of
making extra trips to New York’s legendary Fulton Fish Market during the
Lenten season to keep Friday-fish-eating Catholics out in the suburbs well-
fed and sharing his name with enthusiasm.

For Christopher, it’s Wilensky’s Light Lunch, a Jewish deli in downtown

Montreal that harkens back to 1932. Don’t ask for special anything if you
drop by for some nosh. The staff never cuts the smoked-meat sandwiches in
two, always serves them with mustard and discourages tips for upholding the
joint’s reputation. Any spare change left on the counter goes to a local heart
foundation.

Who is the Jimmy the Fish or the Wilensky’s Light Lunch in your own
community? We’ll bet you can come up with more than one name in way less
than one minute.

The Giant Opportunity In the Troubling Data

There are scads of stats to back up our and your personal anecdotes about the
vital role entrepreneurs play in making the economy go-round.

Consider the trends on Heather and Christopher’s home turf of the U.S. of A.

The U.S. Small Business Administration estimates that from the first quarter
of 1993 through the third quarter of 2016, firms with 500 employees (its
definition of “small business,” there are many others) generated 61.8% of
all new jobs.

That figure includes the impact of two huge nationwide dips during the
recessions of 2001 to 2002 and 2008 to 2010.

In any given year, roughly 8% of all the small businesses considered in

SBA’s annual census are startups — that is, ventures that are less than one
year old.

The founders behind those newbie companies are diverse in the literal and
figurative sense.

In 2012, close to one-third of U.S. small businesses were female-

owned;

Close to one-third had been started by demographic minorities, led

by Hispanics;

And at least half were home-based, most notably ventures related to

information services (like both Christopher’s and Heather’s!),
construction or professional services.

Sounds great, right?

A win for entrepreneurship!

Actually, not so much.

Especially when you realize startups and solopreneurs accounted for 12% of
all U.S. companies in 1980.

Fact: We’re starting considerably fewer startups on an annual basis

than 25 years ago.

The data says American entrepreneurs have been steadily losing ground over
the intervening decades4.

Things have gotten so bad that The Wall Street Journal recently declared “A
Crisis In American Entrepreneurship,”5 citing as evidence ongoing research6
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lab for Innovation Science
and Policy. “To the extent that the current state of American entrepreneurship
is facing a crisis, it is not in the rate of creation of high growth-potential
startups or even in the initial funding of those firms, but, instead, in the
potential of those firms to scale in a meaningful way over time,” the MIT
researchers wrote.

Where are the entrepreneurs?

We could spout plenty of excuses, reasons, theories, and data — all of them
valid, none of them entirely the root cause.

Here are some of the more obvious ones.

The demographics.

For one thing, the Millennial generation (those of us born from 1982 to 2000)
seems less inclined to work for themselves than their elders who are still in
the workforce.

Fewer than 2% of less-than-30-somethings identified as self-employed in

2014.

Even though they like the idea of being “entrepreneurial, they’re not actually
starting new companies7.

Perhaps they’re shackled by the heavy weight of student loans.8

Maybe they just have a smaller appetite for risk than their parents. Whatever
the case, it’s not a rosy long-term trend indicator. “Low entrepreneurship
among Millennials implies fewer new businesses and may, therefore, have
negative implications for economic growth,” the SBA notes in an analysis.

There are financial factors.

Outside of Silicon Valley, it’s criminal how difficult it is for

entrepreneurs and small businesses to raise outside funding — the most
common model is “bootstrapping” with personal or family savings.

Only 4.5% use loans from financial institutions to grow their ideas, at least in
part because they’re so darn hard to get.

This makes Christopher want 20 seconds alone in a room with a few bank
CEOs.

And we don’t want to get too political, but the salt in this wound is that in
2008, the American taxpayer invested $700 billion to bail out the exact banks
that now won’t lend to the American entrepreneur.

The people who fucked the economy now won’t fund the people who
build the economy.

Just sayin.’

But probably the most telling data relates to the rate of business failures —
it’s tough to keep a company afloat, let alone profitable over the long term.
Government statistics show that roughly 20% of all new companies don’t
make it through their first year; half make it through five years and only one-
third live to celebrate their 10th anniversary.

That’s a pretty high mortality rate. No wonder risk-averse Millennials or Gen

Xers or Baby Boomers or insert-your-fave-generation here are so skittish.

How can a solopreneur or entrepreneur not just survive, but thrive, well
into the second decade?

Yes, it takes certainly creativity and conviction and cash and courage — and,
ultimately, a category that matters and product or service that someone is
actually willing to buy.

But, we’d argue that the single most important secret to successful
entrepreneurship starts with this simple, profound decision:

Am I going to find my place in the world or make my place in the world?

Creative people, inventors, pioneers, pirates and rabble rousers generally

don’t fit. That is to say, there’s not an existing job that works for them.
Success comes from the commitment to be unique, rather than better-from the
conscious and deliberate vow to capture and conquer your own niche.

Don’t Make This Horrible Mistake!

In the movie “There’s Something About Mary” there is a scene during which
the Ben Stiller character picks up a crazed hitchhiker — played by the
legendary comedian Harland Williams.

As the vignette plays out, Williams’ would-be entrepreneur enthusiastically

pitches his captive audience his can’t-miss business idea: a “7-Minute Abs”
video that he is convinced will outsell the popular “8-Minute Abs” workout.

A no-brainer, right? Right?

A skeptical Stiller responds with: “That’s good — unless, of course,

somebody comes up with ‘6-Minute Abs.’ Then you’re in trouble, huh?”

At which point the hitchhiker and would-be entrepreneur starts convulsing in

the passenger seat, dismayed by the wake-up call that all but banishes his
dream.
Here’s the reality: Many solopreneurs and startups are positioning themselves
to become “7-Minute Disasters,” just like Harland’s character.

That may sound like a harsh observation, but think about it. Most people and
most businesses are building entire companies on go-to-market plans that
attack an existing market category with a strategy of “we’re better.”

They spend their lives competing in a game they can’t win, instead of having
the courage to create their own game.

Pepsi just well might be the most tragic, quintessential example in history of
the 7-Minute Loser blunder.

It made a multi-billion-dollar mistake by running ads comparing itself to

Coca-Cola. “The Pepsi Challenge” proclaimed to the world that Pepsi’s cola
tasted better than Coke. Go on, try us side by side, the marketers urged. All
this campaign did was reinforce Coke’s leadership position, its unique
market-category leadership.

After decades of cola category wars, Coke is still No. 1.

Even neighborhood pizza joints suffer the same fates when they compare
themselves to rivals.

In the five square miles surrounding the village in Northern New Jersey
where Heather makes her home, there are literally 30 restaurants that sell
some sort of dough-covered-with-cheese-and-other-stuff — and that’s just
the ones that market themselves online.

Most of these establishments are tossing some sort of twist on the “New-
York style.” But there is just one that specializes in wafer-thin-crust pies that
are totally unlike the fare you find at your average pizza parlor anywhere else
in the state, or the country for that matter.
It’s called Nellie’s Place, established back in 1989 by Irish immigrants (you
don’t need to be Italian to “own” an Italian food category!) and still a vital
part of community.

The rest of Nellie’s menu is actually pretty ordinary. You go there for the
pies (don’t bother buying the small one because you’ll look like a
lightweight) and the Irish draft ales.

You’ll often wait an hour for the privilege of finding a seat. Nellie’s doesn’t
deliver, but it’s usually flooded with takeout orders. If you don’t like thin-
crust pizza, don’t go there. Call one of the other 29 or so places that are
competing on price or on the promise that they will beat a path to your
doorstep a few minutes quicker than the other guys.

Sure, some of those other pizza joints do sell thin crust as a menu option
‘cause it’s a Jersey thing, but Nellie’s is the name you remember on
Heather’s dead-end street.

Nellie’s wins by offering different pizza, not better pizza.

No matter where your company is located or how big it is, when you position
your business or yourself as “better” than some other option, you are
invading someone else’s queendom. You are fighting for attention,
messaging your mission according to someone else’s rules — a person or
business that your customers already know.

You’re playing a comparison game.

And when two people say, “I’m the best,” by definition one is lying.

Making it worse, the game you’re playing is a game invented by someone

other than you. They set the agenda in the minds of the category. Not you.
They frame the problem. They educate the world on how to solve the
problem and what the product or service is worth. So, you will always be
compared to “them.”

We are begging.

Please don’t be a “7-Minute Disaster.” Don’t compete on someone else’s

terms.

Instead, design your own market category. Become known for a niche you
can own. That way, others will follow you. Others will be compared to you
versus you being compared to others.

That’s a good thing.

If you are open to soaking in the ideas that we present throughout this book,
you’ll gain real insights into how to be crowned category queen or king. The
person who solves a specific problem in a unique way. The person who
changes people’s thinking with a different point of view. The person who
makes their own place in the world. The person who makes a giant difference
in a given category. The person who captures outsized earnings.

Be Different, Not Better

It doesn’t matter whether your objective is to mold a professional-services

business on your own or to build a small venture that employs others who
believe in your mission. Designing a unique and distinct category niche is the
biggest step that any entrepreneur — whether she is going it alone or leading
others — can take towards successfully carving out territory in the minds of
the audience she wants to attract.

It comes down to leveraging the exponential value of what makes you or

your venture “different” rather than leaning on the incremental value of what
makes you “better.”

There’s no such thing as a business that exists in a vacuum. Here’s proof

from the restaurant world.

If we say to you, “Let’s go to Gabriella’s for dinner!” your logical response

might be, “What type of food does it serve?” When you ask that, what you’re
really asking is, “What category of restaurant is Gabriella’s?”

In any buying decision, humans need to know the category first, then they’ll
consider the brand second. It’s how we make sense of the world.

Person A: “Want a piece of gum?”

Person B: “What kind of gum is it?”

Person A: “Honey, can you pick up some Scotch on the way home?”

Person B: “What type of Scotch would you like?”

Category first, brand second.

Examples are all around your neighborhood, your slice of the world.

Nursing a cavity? Need to have your teeth cleaned? You have to know what a
dentist is and believe he or she solves an important problem before you start
shopping for one. And dentists intuitively understand that people shop
category first and brand second.

That’s why almost every dental sign you see in America says in BIG FONT,
“DENTIST” and in small font, “Jane Jones, DDS.” Dentists instinctively
understand — category first, brand second.

Your No. 1 goal on the path to legendary is to achieve a unique position, one
with which your brand can become synonymous.

Imagine being so respected in your field that other people who do similar
things are compared to you, because you are the category queen — the leader
in mindshare.

Examples are everywhere.

Take legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Clay.

You could describe the heavyweight champion as a great athlete and he was,
holding several records for close to four decades and topping rankings by
Sports Illustrated and the BBC. But the real reason Ali occupies such a
unique piece in people’s hearts and minds is that he created his own category
— he was the original social-activist athlete.

Ali wasn’t afraid to use his voice at a time when others in his position usually
deferred to their managers.

Ali was the first athlete to take a very public stand for civil rights and social
justice — refusing to be drafted into the U.S. military in the mid-1960s,
citing both his religion (he converted to Islam) and his objection to the
Vietnam War.

Ali’s status as champion kept him — and these issues — in the spotlight
during the five years he fought his draft conviction, eventually winning an
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971.

Even though he was stripped of his titles and banned from the sport he loved
during the prolonged legal battle, Ali was often dead center in the ring of
public opinion, for good and for bad. His return to the ring was relatively
seamless as a result. That’s why Ali transcended boxing and became a
category king, the person to whom all other “combat athletes” are compared.

Isn’t that just good branding, you ask? No. It’s not.

Quite bluntly, branding in the absence of category creation is bullshit.

Categories Make Brands

Some evidence please?

You got it.

Undeniably, Dell has a great brand in personal computers. And “back in the
day,” Michael Dell was a celebrated entrepreneur.

Today no one cares.

Because the cloud, mobile computing, and virtualization categories made the
personal computer category a mature, low growth, low-innovation category.
And as a result, Dell’s brand doesn’t matter. Dell is the victim of category
violence.

Someone else changed the agenda in tech and Dell “didn’t get the tweet.”

Categories make brands.

Even category kings and queens have trouble treading on turf that others
claimed before them. Google definitely has a legendary brand because it is
the category king in search. It’s even used as a verb! But the Internet giant’s
attempt to break into social-networking services in 2011 with Google Plus
has been an epic flop.

That’s because Google tried to compete mano a mano against Facebook,

which clearly wrote the rules of the category. Three executives and a major
redesign later, the Google-Plus service stills exists and persists — and it has
an impressive audience of 111 million users. That is, until you consider that
Facebook is closing in on 2 billion.

Google’s legendary brand in search was of zero value when the company
strayed out of its category and moved into Facebook’s. No wonder Google
has all but retreated.

Look around your town, your city, your state and you’ll see this dynamic
playing out all around you with businesses large and small.

Think of all the local gyms and fitness clubs that compete by discounting the
heck out of their monthly fees, especially in January, when just about
everyone has resolved to be a fitter, trimmer version of him or herself. Sure,
those campaigns might net a few new members. But the hard, cold facts show
that competing in an existing category is a race to the bottom.

If everyone says they are “better,” consumers get confused. They assume if
everyone says they are “the best” at what they do, the only way to make a
decision is to compare.

The first thing they compare is price. And that starts the race to the bottom.
It’s like watching two prizefighters stand in the middle of the ring and pound
the shit out of each other.

It might be fun to watch a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots-style fight, but it
sucks for the robots.

Companies that compete with each other in the traditional ways end up
destroying much of the margin and profit in the whole market category.

Why not instead design something unique, like a fitness club that caters
solely to women with classes unique to their needs? Throw in daycare
options for the moms in the crowd, and schedule the class times around
school drop-offs and pickups, not just traditional work hours.

Or instead of opening a generic bakery, why not niche down and design a
category you can own, like Dena Tripp and Debbie Shwetz, the co-founders
of Nothing Bundt Cakes? When the ladies got started on their “side project,”
there was no market or demand for a bundt-cake specialist.
They designed the category. They niched down.

Today they are the category queens of the bundt cake with over 250 branded
Bundt bakeries nationwide.9

Over the course of 10 years, a club called Ethos ruled the health-club niche in
Heather’s New Jersey hometown. When the owner decided to close down the
business, the long-time members quite literally went into mourning. And
even though many scattered to different clubs after the doors closed, there are
still frequent reunions organized by the ex-Ethos trainers and fitness staff. If a
similar club emerged to recapture that niche, you can bet that community
would notice.

Similarly, you’ll have to wait at least six months to get inked by

Christopher’s tattoo artist Jeremy Swan of Broken Art Tattoo.

“I started my tattoo career in the beautiful Monterey Bay,” Swan told a local
newspaper ,10 “I worked in that area for 11 years, and I wanted to make the
move to a larger city. San Francisco was an option, but there were an
overwhelming number of fantastic artists there. I loved LA, and in 2003, I
started making weekend trips to tattoo here. My clientele was growing, and
every time I came down, there was a longer list of people to tattoo on the next
trip. I felt like I could really make a mark on this city — figuratively and
literally.”

Translation, Jeremy saw an opportunity to be a regional category king.

San Francisco was saturated when it came to the skills and services he had to
offer. He intuitively understood that he needed to stand out.

So, Jeremy niched down.

Down the coastline, that is.

By making that move, he niched down himself to become one of the top
modern tattooers in LA, ultimately gaining fame on the television show
“America’s Worst Tattoos” on the TLC Network, where he works his magic
to turn disaster-pieces into masterpieces.

Here’s the thing.

Your audience is inundated with up to 60,000 brand messages every single

day, and it has become really good at tuning out the useless, irrelevant stuff.
You can scream your name at us, but if we don’t understand the context your
brand lives in, we’re simply going to ignore you.

And here’s the truth about the life: You can either position yourself or get
positioned.

Sure, it might mean you might have a narrower potential audience — as in

the case of the all-female fitness club Ethos or the bundt-cake bakers. But, it
will engender ferocious loyalty. You lead, they follow.

Most entrepreneurs follow competitors. Legends lead categories.

When people position you, you won’t like it. Legendary people tell the world
how to think about them. They tell the world what they stand for, and what
makes them different from everyone else.

And, like it or not, we increasingly live in a winner-take-all world. In the

process of writing Play Bigger, Christopher and his co-authors completed a
data-science research project (one that was featured in Harvard Business
Review11) about the relevance of category design. It shows that market
leaders, or what we like to call category queens or kings, often earn 76% of
the total value in an entire market category.

That leaves everyone else fighting for the quarter of the pie that’s left. And,
someone invariably goes hungry.
Your World Becomes Theirs

Our dream is that one day more people will find the courage to take
advantage of the exponential value of what makes them different versus
relying on the incremental value of being better.

If you think about it, many of the people the world respects the most were (or
are) different not better.

Pablo Picasso is not just a legendary artist. Pablo Picasso is a legendary

category designer.

He intuitively understood he had to do something different to stand out to rise

above the noise. So, Picasso stopped painting lovely landscapes and turned
his brush toward visualizing the world through geometric shapes that were
less “natural” in their depiction, yet just as “real” to the viewer in their
emotion and impact.

In so doing, Picasso created a new movement in modern art known as

“cubism.” And rather than being just another painter, Picasso became the first
cubist artist. He niched down to create a new world view. And he stuck to it,
becoming the most famous artist on the planet — arguably, even today.

It takes courage to be different, but the payoff can be huge.

As a young man growing up in Alaska, Legends & Losers friend and guest
Jon DeVore12 (Episode 108) fell in love with skydiving. He knew he wanted
to make flying his life. But at the time, the only real way to make that happen
was as an instructor. Nope, Jon didn’t want to teach parachuting. He didn’t
want to create just-another adventure tourism business.

He wanted to fly.

Then he had an “aha” moment.

Jon recognized that the sport of jumping out of planes or off ridiculously high
cliffs was developing and changing, morphing to embrace new extremes.
Wingsuit flying and a related sport, BASE jumping, were emerging as the
evolution of parachuting. He concluded that those activities were the future,
and that they would redesign the world of skydiving in much the same way
snowboarding changed skiing and mountain sports.

Then Jon did what legends do.

He defied gravity.

He could not find his place in the world, so he made his place in the
world.

He niched down.

That is to say, Jon proactively created his niche in the world — based on his
skills and a point of view about why the world needed his new category of
athlete. He summoned unusual courage and bet his life on a career in a field
that didn’t exist! Jon designed a new category, intending to show the world
that it needed a new type of flying athlete meets stunt-person.

“Even at a young age I had a goal of realizing that our sport — and not just
skydiving, but any kind of extreme, not-the-normal, top five every-kid-can-
do-it sport — I realized that the only way to grow any sport is through
education,” he shared on the Legends & Losers podcast.

“And if you can teach people, even if they never jump in their life, that we’re
not just yahoo-adrenaline junkies that are on a death wish. We’re doing an
artistic, beautiful, super-disciplined sport. And the more people are educated
that it is a sport, and not a stunt, the more the sport’s gonna grow and have
validity to it. My goal is that when I do retire one day, because I just can’t
keep doing it, that I’ve paved a path for other athletes to be the Tom Brady,
to be kids’ heroes.”
It worked.

Today, Jon is the “go-to guy in the “dangerously addictive” field he created
— with more than 22,000 jumps to his name. He’s captain of “The Red Bull
Airforce,” a team that includes the most “accomplished and experienced
aviation experts on the planet,” specializing in aerial jump demonstrations
that defy the laws of gravity. He performs in a stunning number of major
motion pictures. If you’ve seen “Iron Man,” “The Dark Knight,” “Hangover
Part III,” “Furious 7” or “Point Break,” you’ve seen Jon defy the laws of
gravity.

“I’m very much an entrepreneur. From day one, I’ve worked since I was 10,”
DeVore told Legends & Losers. “Whether I was pulling weeds for neighbors,
or shoveling driveways in the winter. That’s what led me to this path. … My
counselor told me to drop out of school. But I told her what I wanted to do
with my life, and she said, ‘You need to get out of school. You need to go
and pursue these disciplines you’re trying to offer to people. Open your
dream business.’ That’s always been my mindset. I think that’s what
separates me a lot from other professional skydivers out there. They’re trying
to be athletes and get paid by doing the sport. Where I’m always trying to
develop businesses around it, whether I’m opening production companies or
developing stuff for stunts. … When it comes to aerial sports, I’m lucky
enough to seem to be the one that gets the phone calls. There’s a few guys out
there to call, but I’m the one who gets the calls.”

Legends like Jon do not simply “follow their passion” or “hustle” their way
to the top. They proactively position themselves as different in a field they
can become the leader in. They do not fall into the trap of thinking that just
by being great at something, they’ll be successful, or that they’ll be
successful by “working hard.”

That’s a fool’s errand.

Legends become category queens / kings by “owning” their niche. And,
as a result, they become the standard by which all others are measured.

Legends of the Niche

Category kings exist in small and large niches in every layer of our lives.
Facebook is certainly the king of social networks, and Amazon is the queen
of e-commerce. But you can easily identify legendary niche makers far
beyond the world of high-tech gadgets and doodads.

Need a badass leather motorcycle jacket?

The first place Christopher will look is Schott’s New York, which invented
the category back in the late 1920s when founder Irving Schott replaced
buttons with a zipper that allowed for a snugger, warmer fit.

Retailers from Sears to Harley Davidson have copied the design, but Schott’s
still owns this niche. And you’ve seen the “Perfecto” design (named after a
cigar) on Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, The Ramones, Blondie, Joan Jett,
James Dean and Marlon Brando.

Peter Fonda’s leather jacket in the all-American road movie Easy Rider — a
Schott.

“When you look at the jacket, you can register emotions about the person
wearing it,” the current chief operating officer Jason Schott told the BBC13.
“Whether you are trying it on yourself or looking at somebody trying it on,
you look like a badass. It’s something that has been reinforced over
generations.” (Jason represents the fourth generation of ownership.)

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that one of Heather’s favorite

examples comes from the eco-system of eco-friendly stuff, specifically, the
land of green cleaning products. The market category of non-toxic,
biodegradable soap and laundry detergents barely existed when chemical
engineer Adam Lowry and his marketing-savvy roommate Eric Ryan began
mixing up formulas in their San Francisco apartment in 2000.

As the story goes: “Eric knew people wanted cleaning products they didn’t
have to hide under their sinks. And Adam knew how to make them without
any dirty ingredients.” They weren’t exactly the first to be skeeved out about
all the toxic stuff in our soap, shampoo and other stuff that’s supposed to be
“clean.” But the company they founded, Method, galvanized attention with
its decision to position its green cleansers not as “better” than traditional
products, but as something completely different, that had a new type of value
all their own.

The methods behinds Method’s rise to category king were also rather
unorthodox for the time — lots of slim bottles and concentrated formulations
that took up less shelf space — both in the store and in your closet. Who’s
going to argue with that?

“The traditional approach in consumer products marketing is to do gobs of

consumer research,” Adam told Heather for a profile14. “It doesn’t take a
genius to figure out what that produces is a lot of really ordinary products
that are pretty uninspired. We need to have a point of view.”

We recognize these companies as legends of their niche because they are the
companies that taught consumers how to think in a new way. As a result,
when someone mentions their category, they are the “go to” brand.

But don’t let their success intimidate you.

Any solopreneur or entrepreneur, or any person in their career, can benefit

from niching down, even if the world you’d like to conquer lies within four
square blocks! Your dent in the universe may be smaller, but it’s a dent that
matters to the people it matters to!
How can you make a dent?

We’re glad you asked.

Turn the page.

2 Learn more about Bix Bickson in Legends & Losers Episode 120, “Unlocked: Joe & Bix Bickson on
Results.”
3 U.S. Small Business Administration, “Frequently Asked Questions,” August 2017.
4 Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, “Business Dynamics Statistics Briefing: Where Have All the
Young Firms Gone?” May 2012.
5 The Wall Street Journal, “The Crisis in American Entrepreneurship,” March 7, 2016.
6 MIT Innovation Initiative, “A New View of the Sky: A Quantitative Assessment of American
Entrepreneurship,” February 2016.
7 Entrepreneur, “Where’d All the Millennial Entrepreneurs Go?” November 16, 2017.
8 SBA, “The Missing Millennial Entrepreneurs,” February 4, 2016.
9 Southside Daily, “National Bundt cake franchise to expand to Virginia Beach,” February 9, 2018.
10 TimeOut, “Time Out With Tattoo Artist Jeremy Swan of Broken Art Tattoo,” April 24, 2014.
11 Harvard Business Review, “How Unicorns Grow,” January-February 2016.
12 Learn more about Jon Devore in Legends & Losers Episode 108, “Creating a New Category of
Extreme Athlete,” December 2017.
13 BBC, “Rebel rebel: The biker jacket,” April 24, 2014.
14 ZDNet, “Disruptor | Adam Lowry, Method,” June 4, 2013.
 2.
FALL IN LOVE WITH THE
PROBLEM
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and
five minutes thinking about solutions.”
— Albert Einstein, legendary physicist

Stop, Look, Listen. Repeat.

Let’s play a game of word association, shall we?

We’ll name three iconic entrepreneurs who frequently make headlines — and
not just in the business press, but deeply within the mainstream
consciousness. We bet you will think immediately of the segment they
embody, rather than just their company.

Bill Gates = Personal computer software. (Even for Macintosh products!)

Elon Musk = Electric vehicles. (Or new-age rockets!)

Sara Blakely = Shapeware. (This is not your grandmother’s girdle!)

This trio is living proof that iconic entrepreneurs are ones who go on to
embody their category, who become synonymous with a specific market
segment.
And vice versa.

We’ll bet you can rattle off dozens more names — even if the companies
aren’t quite as mega — that are unique legends in your chosen profession or
your local community.

Becoming known for a niche you own is as critical for your success as the
quality of the stuff you sell or your gift of gab when it comes to describing
said stuff in a way that resonates with would-be customers.

In fact, legendary entrepreneurs are intuitive category designers. To become

one yourself, open your mind to the pain points, frustrations and foibles that
drive your prospective buyers nuts. Then, plot the route around them, over
them, or straight through them.

It starts with looking and listening.

Because new categories are created when a new problem is defined (or an
existing problem is re-imagined) — and solved. No one buys a “solution”
until they identify with the problem.

If you can articulate that problem clearly and offer a practical way to
make it go away, people will demand the solution from you.

There are two types of problems in the world that inspire new categories.

First, there is a known problem that gets reimagined and redefined.

Perhaps it’s because a new generation of consumer has different expectations

or an innovative new technology has emerged. Or, because someone was just
super smart enough and able to view the situation from a fresh angle.

Second, there is a problem we don’t know we have, that gets evangelized

so well that it becomes a whole new market category.
If you pause long enough to look around, it doesn’t take long to see examples
of successful entrepreneurs who are defining new categories right before our
very eyes in your local community, your region or on the global scene.

Take recycling, something most sane humans who care about the future of
the planet would love to do religiously — but that is ridiculously complicated
to figure out. The system is broken, and it’s broken in different ways
depending on where you live around the world.

The problem is that the world has been trained to think of all forms of
garbage as “waste,” as something to be disposed of. But “waste” is a concept
that has only existed for about 70 years, since the entirely human inventions
of complex materials like plastics and the emergence of consumerism, and
the idea that we need more and more stuff.

If you look at nature, there is no such thing as a useless output.

And that was the “aha” moment for Hungarian-born entrepreneur Tom
Szaky15, founder and CEO of TerraCycle16, a company on a mission to
eliminate waste.

Szaky started his company while he was a student at Princeton University. He

collected nutrient-rich, organic materials like coffee grounds and banana
peels and fed it to earthworms, harvesting their feces. (He got the idea from
some of his marijuana-growing friends north of the border.)

The company’s first product was a worm-poop fertilizer that it sold as plant
food — packaged in used beverage bottles, so it could be stocked on retail
shelves of its customers.

Walmart and Home Depot were early to buy into the idea. And TerraCycle
successfully grew that line to $6 million. Not bad for someone literally
selling shit in garbage containers.
But that’s exactly when Szaky realized his organization needed to reconsider
the bigger waste problem with fresh eyes if it truly wanted to become
legendary.

There comes a time in almost everyone’s life when they realize that their
current position is their biggest barrier to growth.

So, the TerraCycle team reimagined the problem again.

Today, they talk about eliminating the very idea of “waste,” drawing
inspiration from the way that natural systems function. They are laser-
focused on the much bigger mission of turning hard-to-recycle materials into
something useful.

Tom’s unique-and-controversial rationale: He didn’t want TerraCycle to be

known as a one-product wonder and it was on its way to becoming just that.

Hence the pivot.

He wanted the organization to address a much larger category — no matter

how painful that revelation might be in terms of revenue hiccups and
employee turnover.

It was time to burn the boats.

And it was tough: TerraCycle had to close a factory and lay off workers in
order to invest in that change. It takes courage to be legendary.

Tom explained how he thinks about his favorite “problem” during an

interview with Heather, who has covered TerraCycle for close to a decade:

“The primary purpose was solving a major issue, and for me garbage was the
issue. It’s a fascinating topic. First, and this is a fun thing, it’s the only
industry in the world that will one day own all of your possessions without an
exception. No other industry can say that.

“It’s also the only industry that has negative raw-materials costs. In other
words, people are willing to pay you to take the material. That’s what defines
garbage as garbage

“The third, for how big it is, and how everything one day will be in it, it’s one
of the most un-innovative industries. Per increment of revenue in the
industry, it has one of the lowest levels of innovation. And a big part of that
is it’s not sexy; people don’t like dealing with it. We flush it down the toilet,
we put it in our trash, we don’t like thinking about it.”

The roots of Tom’s fascination with garbage actually stretch back to his early
childhood in Budapest.

When his family emigrated to Canada, they were astonished by the sorts of
things people would leave in the street as trash — like perfectly good
television sets that were considered obsolete, but that were otherwise usable.

Contrast that mindset with communist Hungary, where you actually had to
apply to the government to become a TV-set owner. In the western world, the
Szakys saw no shame in becoming avid garbage pickers.

Tom’s decision to reconsider the waste problem through a much larger, yet
more focused lens catalyzed a huge expansion starting in the 2007 time
frame: TerraCycle’s businesses now include a “sponsored waste” service that
helps consumer brand giants like Unilever and Procter & Gamble collect
hard-to-recycle packaging and an R&D group dedicated to figuring out how
to repurpose stuff that is considered “non-recyclable.”

Massive companies like Waste Management are copying its ideas.

In fact, category designers always attract competitors. And that’s a great

thing. Competition validates that the problem you solve is important. And
most of all, by copying you, your rivals are telling the category that you are
the leader.

By laser focusing on one specific problem — finding new value in what most
people consider to be “waste” and upcycling it into other things (basically
giving it a second life) — TerraCycle created a niche that didn’t previously
exist.

It’s now a $30-million company, with more than 200 employees on the
payroll — and that doesn’t include the thousands of other allies and people in
the field that are part of its ecosystem. (More on that later in Chapter 4, where
we’ll talk about how legendary entrepreneurs evangelize their world view and
build ecosystems of disciples that help spread their gospel.)

Here is a little more on Tom’s philosophy about focus. In his own words:

“I completely agree with focus being ridiculously important, but for

entrepreneurs like me who like dealing with many different topics, garbage
allows me to do both: focus very cleanly on one simple idea, which is to
eliminate the concept of waste, but that actually gives an opportunity to do
just about anything.”

It’s one of the great crazy dichotomies of life: By niching down, you get to
play more broadly.

Let’s unpack that theme with another example.

Our friend, Jen Groover, (she answers to “Groover”) had her entrepreneurial
breakthrough with a one-hit product in a very specific category that she
envisioned and designed. That moment came during a stressed-out
experience in a checkout line.

Groover recalled her epiphany for the “Storytelling for Entrepreneurs” blog17:
“I was in the grocery store one night with my girls in their car seats. I put
them down on the floor, and I was looking for my credit card. They both
began wailing, screaming, crying. I was holding everybody up. I was
panicking. I dumped my bag full of stuff in front of the cashier to find my
credit card, and I thought to myself, ‘I cannot believe, as far as innovation has
come in our society, that we, as women, accept a bucket for a handbag.’ Like,
literally a bucket. I could put a lining, a mop, and water in it and it’s a bucket.
... There has to be a better way’ was all I kept thinking.”

So, Groover set off to create one.

Her now-famous Butler Bag is considered the world’s first “organizer bag.”
It’s a stylish, feminine bag that is also super functional. No compromises on
style. No more endless hunting for keys, wallets and other mysterious
objects. Today, major retailers and Avon carry it, and the Butler Bag is a
multi-million-dollar product line.

From there, the woman who was once tied down to her chair as a schoolgirl
for being too curious turned herself into a wardrobe advisor, lifestyle brand,
best-selling author, motivational speaker and television celebrity.

She’s also a partner in Thuzio, an executive and entrepreneur networking

organization started by former NFL star Tiki Barber and investor Mark
Gerson.

In fact, Jen’s list of achievements is fucking exhausting. She is what Success

Magazine calls a “one-woman brand.”

She got there by niching down to become the category queen in “organizer
bags.” And then, she played bigger, parlaying her experiences as an
entrepreneur into a series of books that help others find ways to reach their
best potential. (Sorry, we had to drop at least one reference to Christopher’s
first book, Play Bigger. We promise it won’t be the last.)

Once you open your mind, like Jen and Tom did, you’ll realize that we
are surrounded by “problems” just begging to be considered from a
different point of view.

Here’s another example you’ll appreciate, especially if you’ve ever flirted

with the idea of opening a neighborhood watering hole or restaurant.

Paul Kermizian, Pete Langway, and brothers Kevin and Scott Beard are four
guys who appreciate craft beer, classic rock and old-school video games. One
day they had an “a-ha” moment — what if they could create a place where
like-minded individuals could find and enjoy all of the above?

In an article for Mashable18, Kermizian, who holds the title of CEO, recalled,
“I was a collector of arcade cabinets and had four games in my apartment in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn,” When my partners and I decided to open a craft
beer bar back in 2004, we thought lining it with classic games might be fun,
as we hadn’t seen that before.”

And with that insight, the “arcade-bar” category — a contemporary twist on

the local dive bar — was born. Kermizian and friends dubbed their concept
Barcade and selected vibrant Brooklyn, New York, as the place to plug in.

Their idea to create an entirely new concept with little to no “market

research” worked. Even in a business-startup category with one of the highest
known failure rates,19 restaurants and bars.

Close to 15 years after that opening, there are seven Barcades in the New-
York metropolitan area in urban neighborhoods with similar nostalgic, beer-
appreciating demographics such as Jersey City, Philadelphia, Newark and
New Haven, Connecticut. Each location features about 45 video games from
the late 70s to the mid 90s, something like 25 beers on draft (including some
that are exclusive to the location), and a full bar and full kitchen to appeal to
tag-alongs.

We don’t know these guys personally, but here’s what we do know: Paul and
his video-playing business partners are intuitive category designers.

Think about this:

If you had hired a bunch of khaki-pant-wearing management consultants in

2004 to do category research on the potential for establishing a new
restaurant niche, is there a snowball’s chance in hell they would have come
back with a recommendation to start the world’s first arcade bar?

That would be a big NFW (no fuckin’ way).

Yet, somehow, like so many other legendary entrepreneurs, the Barcade boys
were able to see the problem of “where do I get craft beer and play classic
video games without lying on my couch” from a unique angle. And they
intuitively understood that they had to tell the world what made their bar
different.

They did not leave describing and defining their category to chance.
They shaped the conversation. Because every legendary entrepreneur is
also an evangelist.

They told people they were an “arcade bar”, and then they set about showing
customers what arcade bars do, and sell, and look like. And just to make sure
no one forgot they were different, they named the place Barcade. Not Paul,
Pete, Kevin and Scott’s Bar or some other non-differentiated name. They
locked and loaded their new category and tied their brand to it.

Today their tag line is, “The Original Arcade Bar.” Because, as is the case
with compelling new market categories, there were plenty of people
following in their footsteps.

Legendary.

The Mothers Of Reinvention

Legendary category designers never stop reminding the world that they
created the category. That they are the standard by which all others must be
compared. And that they haven’t stopped looking at the original problem
from new angles.

Take the story of GOJO Industries. You might not know this privately held
company’s name, but you’ll recognize the name of its most famous product.

In 1997, GOJO, with its introduction of the consumer edition of Purell20,

convinced millions of parents and germaphobes that we should use “hand
sanitizer” before and after we touch anything. Refuse to do so at your own
peril!

In 1996, none of us even knew we needed hand sanitizer.

Today, millions of people carry the stuff with them everywhere.

Hospitals and doctors’ offices worship it via dispensers hanging on the walls.
You can find bottles scattered on hotel check-in counters and at the start of
restaurant and cruise-ship buffet lines.

It’s even tough to make it through boot camp without being exposed to the
brand: the military is a huge customer.

At its height, Purell owned21 an estimated 70 percent of the hand-sanitizer-

market category. (There was a brief change in ownership, but that’s a story
for another book.) Its name is the one to beat for mindshare22. The brand that
all other hand sanitizers are compared to.

There’s a corollary: The bigger and more urgent the problem, the more
time and money people will invest to solve it.

You don’t want to be walking around with unsanitary hands now, do you?
The “overnight” success story behind Purell maker GOJO actually began
almost 40 years earlier, in World War II-era Akron, Ohio, with a simple
problem identified by tire factory worker Goldie Lippman — it was super
difficult to get carcinogenic substances like graphite, carbon and tar off her
hands with regular bar soap after a production shift.

You had to use benzene, which was irritating. Women, in particular, were
interested in an alternative23 because who wants red, smelly hands?

That problem inspired Goldie’s husband Jerry, who invented a formulation

that was less harsh and that was delivered in liquid form. The two
entrepreneurs mixed up the product using a washing machine and packaged
the soap in pickle jars pilfered from local restaurants.

Yes friends, GOJO (the company’s name is a mash-up of the founders’ first
names) was also the designer of the “liquid-hand-soap” category! Before
GOJO, most individuals used “bar soap” to scrub their hands, faces, feet,
clothes.

And the venture also came up with a way of controlling portions, so that it
was more cost-effective for business owners to buy the product.

Today, more than 70 years later, GOJO’s identity is still synonymous with
the hygienic benefits of keeping your hands clean.

That’s true in large part because it has never stopped thinking about the
original problem and new ways of addressing it. “You don’t go up against the
giants unless you have a category-defining brand,” GOJO’s current CEO, Joe
Kanfer, (the Lippmans’s nephew) told The New Yorker24 for a corporate
profile published in 2013.

Where do entrepreneurial epiphanies come from?

The corollary to the Einstein observation that opens this chapter is this
second life lesson from the legendary physicist:

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we
created them.”

For a sense of what that means, let’s peek inside the weird* (we love weird!)
brain of Sara Blakely, the former fax-machine salesperson who founded
Spanx and who became the youngest self-made billionaire25 of any gender in
the United States at age 41.

All because she turned her personal clothing habit — cutting the feet out of
her pantyhose — into a wildly successful new undergarment category.

Sara worked on her idea for two years (while still selling fax machines and
spending more than $5,000 of her savings on research) before she would
discuss it with anyone.

That’s partly because she was afraid her family and friends would try to talk
her out of it and partly because she wanted to make sure she could defend it
unequivocally and enthusiastically when she got around to blabbing about it.

It’s a superstitious habit she still embraces today.

And it’s not because she is afraid of failure.

As a child, Sara’s father would be disappointed if she and her brother

couldn’t name at least one thing they had flopped at weekly. She would
literally get a high five for falling flat on her face, literally or figuratively.

“Failure for me didn’t become about the outcome, it became about not
trying,” Blakely told serial entrepreneur and angel investor James Altucher
on his podcast.26 (A note from Heather: Run, don’t walk, to find headphones
and listen to this interview. And then listen again. Actually, don’t bother with
the headphones, everyone should hear it!)
Sara knew that she wasn’t the only woman frustrated with the problem of
getting pants and skirts and dresses to hang “just so” without bulges or clings
or whatever. She envisioned her new undergarment as the “invisible canvas”
upon which great designs could be displayed.

She didn’t need fashion or retail or business experience to tell her that, which
is good, because this former stand-up comedian and saleswoman didn’t have
any.

“What you don’t know can be your greatest asset if you let it,” she observed
during the podcast. “So if you’re sitting there right now in your life, and you
have an idea or you imagine a different life for yourself, but you’re like ‘I
didn’t go to school for it’ or ‘I don’t have any contacts in this’ or ‘I don’t
have money to do this’ – those things, if you allow them to, could become
your competitive edge. They could be what gives you the opportunity to do
something amazing. If you don’t know how it’s supposed to be done, then it’s
pretty likely you’re going to do it differently.”

What she did have, in spades, was persistence and an infectious enthusiasm
for her idea. Sara’s a missionary, not a mercenary. Category designers are on
a mission to solve a problem, to get the world out to be different and to make
a difference. They are possessed. They would crawl through glass to make it
happen.

And, they recruit others in their mission.

Sara’s enthusiasm stuck with the mill operator who handed Sara her first big
production deal. It also won over the skeptical Neiman-Marcus buyer who
followed the eager entrepreneur into the ladies’ restroom for an impromptu,
visual demonstration of how Spanx works. Won over in 10 minutes, that
buyer subsequently placed orders enough for a trial in seven stores.

Almost 18 years later, Sara spends an hour every weekday letting her mind
wander during her morning commute. Even though she lives just five minutes
away from the Spanx headquarters, she leaves an hour early. Behind the
wheel, she records random thoughts and questions that pop into her head. Her
running list of ideas is more than 50 pages long.

That’s single-spaced.

Here’s Blakely’s view on perpetual ideation, as told to James Altucher:

“As far as products go, I look at everything, and I like to ask why. You could
look at the table sitting in between us and ask, ‘Who invented the table? How
interesting. And, who is the first person who did that? What were they
thinking? Is that that right way it should still be created? When’s the last time
tables changed? And, Is there a better way?’

“I find things really interesting. Like the men’s undershirt. The undershirt is
part of the reason I went into men’s Spanx,” Blakely told Altucher.

The men’s line wasn’t the result of some overwrought business plan or
months of focus groups. Blakely just wondered: When was the last time
someone actually thought to redesign the simple cotton T-shirt hiding under a
men’s dress shirt? And then she empowered her team to answer that question.
“I operate very much from gut and very much from product. If I can create a
product that is going to change lives or make your life better or be a better
option, that is where I get my energy. And, I let the rest work itself out.”

No Problem Too Narrow

When Tim Rhode, a dear friend and Legends & Losers guest (Episode 727),
started his real-estate career as a young man, he wanted to distinguish himself
from other agents in his community. His motivation was simple: close
enough contracts to keep two kids under the age of four in diapers.
To make his name, he niched down!

Tim narrowed the problem, picking a simple and specific niche in which he
could specialize: He would only work for people who wanted to sell their
homes quickly.

He developed a point of view (POV) that spoke to those people and then
went about creating an aggressive, zany and fun marketing around the niche
he wanted to own.

His tagline, “Call Tim Rhode and start packing.”

A brilliant “niche down.”

Tim focused on solving a different problem and promoted himself using that
POV.

He was NOT the real-estate agent for everyone and anyone who wants to buy
or sell a house.

He was not the guy who would set asking prices artificially high to stroke the
ego of a seller. In fact, he regularly turned away clients who wanted to play
that game, referring them to other real estate professionals in his community.

Instead, Tim became the agent for people who wanted to sell their house now.
He solved one, focused, different, specialized problem: selling a house fast.

And he made it his life’s mission to find eager sellers. “I’d call you about
every three months. If your home expired, if it was withdrawn, if you were
‘For sale by owner,’ I’d go out and drive neighborhoods and look for homes
that looked like they needed love,” Rhode recalled on the Legends & Losers
podcast. “If the neighbors were out there I’d say, ‘Hey, what’s going on with
this home?’ I was just really fanatical. I was like a drug addict looking for
their next fix: How can I list the next home?”
Tim was a category designer on a mission with a provocative and engaging
POV. That’s how he got known for a niche he owned.

That may sound like a very simple, personal category design (and we’d argue
that it is). But executing a simple, powerful niche down made Tim a Top 10
salesperson in the United States for his company.

He sold real estate for 18 years and closed more than 2,500 contracts during
that period. Not bad for a self-described “hick from the sticks” who used to
paint address numbers on curbs to make ends meet.

Today, Tim shares many of the business and life strategies he used to achieve
success through a non-profit organization called 1LifeFullyLived, which
focuses on personal development, and GoBundance, which you can think of
as a support group aka “master mind” for successful men. (Tim calls it a
“tribe for healthy, wealthy, generous men who choose to lead epic lives.”)

“Both groups started the same way, slowly [and] organically,” Tim told
Christopher on the podcast. “We set the culture early on in both groups, and
it’s just grown. … We’ve never really advertised for either of these ventures.
… It’s all just word of mouth. People that come in know we’re no bullshit,
we really care about humanity, and we really want to make a difference.”

To summarize: The best way to design a category and make yourself its king
or queen is to find a problem, articulate it powerfully and make sure others
see the solution as you see it.

So the key question you must consider is, “What problem do I solve?”

Read on to learn how your unique answer will shape your niche — in life and
business.
15 Legends & Losers, “Tom Szaky – Garbage Innovation,” June 22, 2018.
16 GreenBiz.com, “TerraCycle: Eliminating the idea of waste by recycling everything,” Feb. 16, 2018.
17 Storytelling for Entrepreneurs, “Getting to ‘Aha’ — Jen Groover and the Moment that Led to the
Butler Bag,” April 24, 2016.
18 Mashable, “18 Quirky, Niche Businesses,” June 6, 2014.
19 Small Business Trends, “Startup Statistics: The Numbers You Need to Know,” May 1, 2016.
20 “Our History,” GOJO Industries corporate web site.
21 Akron Beacon Journal, “Purell brand handed back to Akron’s GOJO,” Oct. 30, 2010.
22 AdWeek, “How Purell Became the Brand That’s Kept Our Flu-Obsessed Fears at Bay,” March 29,
2016.
23 The New Yorker, “Hands Across America,” March 4, 2013.
24 The New Yorker, “Hands Across America,” March 4, 2013.
25 Forbes, “America’s Richest Self-Made Women.”
26 James Altucher, “How To Get a Billion-Dollar Idea,” February 2017.
27 Legends & Losers, “How Tim Rhode Became a Category King and Started Two Life-Changing
Organizations,” Feb. 28, 2017.
 3.
BE KNOWN FOR ONE THING
YOU CAN OWN
“Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.”
— Rick Warren, legendary evangelical pastor and author of “The Purpose Driven Life”

Calculate Your Unique “Magic Triangle”

One of the biggest, most boneheaded mistakes we encounter in the business

world is the belief that the best product wins.

Build it and they will come. My widget is better than your widget. We’ve
actually heard CEOs say, “We make shit, we sell shit, and everything else is
bullshit.”

We thinks they doth protest too much.

Frankly, that sort of thinking is for followers, not leaders. If you and your
company don’t stand for something unique, you are dooming yourself to
mediocrity, no matter how great your product is, or how cool your company
culture.

Legendary success requires that you design a great company and a great
product and a unique category. We refer to this winning triad as the “Magic
Triangle,” as first introduced in “Play Bigger.”
What does this look like? We’re glad you asked. And, voila!

Each side of a Magic Triangle bears equal weight in the formula for success,
but many entrepreneurs spend the bulk of their time obsessing over just two
ingredients: business model (aka company design) and what they plan to sell
(aka product design).

Those inputs are definitely crucial elements of success, but focusing on them
without thinking long and hard through the category design is an exercise in
frustration that makes for a lopsided strategy. It’s a strategy that won’t stand
up for very long under market pressure.

You can hustle all you want, but if you’re hustling to position yourself in a
category that already exists, you’ll find yourself on one of those endless
hamster-exercise wheels — running at full speed without really getting
anywhere.

You aren’t defining the conversation. You’re playing by someone else’s rules
— rules that could change midcourse.

Your business may become profitable (and there’s nothing wrong with that!),
but it won’t ever become truly extraordinary.

That’s why the foundation for niching down needs to be category design —
with you as chief designer, coming up with the right math for your own
unique Magic Triangle.

When the right product and right company connect to a powerful category, it
can catalyze legendary entrepreneurship — both for individuals and
companies.

How can you make sure your triangle’s geometry has all the right angles?

How can you ensure that everything adds up to provide a solid foundation for
your career and your startup?

If you’re a solopreneur — or a “youpreneur” if you prefer that emerging term

coined by management consultant and podcaster Chris Ducker — this might
involve developing a personal set of beliefs, a way of making life decisions
and a lifestyle that embodies the category you want to be known for.

Category design on the personal level is about making your place in the world
— connecting what makes you unique to a problem people care about, and
then positioning yourself as the solution.

But isn’t that just personal branding, you wonder?

Not quite.

Branding preaches making your name known — the more people hear or see
your brand, the better. Category design is about owning a niche, based on
solving a problem of importance.
In other words, when you think of that category, you automatically think of a
specific person.

Exhibit A: When zillion-dollar movie maker Michael Bay wants to showcase

flying stunts in a new film, he calls Jon DeVore and his team of flying
athletes, whom you met in Chapter 1.

Likewise, there was a time when most real-estate owners in Manteca,

California, knew that if their problem was that they wanted to sell a house
quickly all they had to do was, “Call Tim Rhode and start packing.”

Exhibit B: If you’re intrigued by the category of impact investing, you should

write a thank-you note to Nancy Pfund (our guest on Legends & Losers
Episode 146). She’s the venture capitalist who pioneered the idea of backing
startups that could make a meaningful social, environmental and economic
impact. Her track record includes early investments in electric vehicle
maverick Tesla, Solar City and healthy school meals provider Revolution
Foods.

The concept of category is equally powerful for the viability of businesses

large and small.

As Eddie Yoon, a former consultant and analyst for Cambridge Group and
Nielsen, observes in one of his articles on this topic for Harvard Business
Review:

“Category creation goes beyond innovation, in that the new category shares
roots with its original product class, but delivers such exponentially better
benefits, experience, and economics that the new category graduates from its
original product class. Another telltale sign of category creation is that it
comes with a distinctive business model and profit model.”28

Indeed, Yoon’s research suggests that within new and growing market
categories, the creators of that niche capture a remarkable 80 percent of the
growth.

The Power Of Category Design

A company’s value largely depends on three factors.

First is the revenue or sales potential for the market category or space that it
embodies or inhabits. In other words, do people really care about the product
or service you’re selling?

Second, value is pegged to the position of the company in that category,

because the category queen by definition captures the lion’s share of the
available revenue. And, the third factor in value is ongoing performance —
proof that the organization will stick around long enough to deliver on its
promises.

As explored in Christopher’s first book Play Bigger, the Magic-Triangle

philosophy has fueled countless Silicon Valley “Big E” (that’s “E” for
entrepreneur, as we mentioned in the book introduction!) startups that
rocketed into market dominance.

Vivid examples include the social-networking-creator Facebook in the early

2000s, and later Instagram, which is the king of photo and video sharing as
well as WhatsApp, which became the queen of cross-border and cross-
platform messaging) in more recent years.

Or Lululemon, queen of yoga clothes.

Or Clif Bars, monarch of organic, energy-laden snack bars, with more than
one-third of the overall market.

If you’re a parent of future woman-to-be-reckoned-with, here’s another one

you’ll find easy to embrace — American Girl dolls.
Back in 1986, when educator Pleasant Rowland started the company that
birthed this concept, her original idea was to help young girls learn more
about the role of women in the nation’s history through the eyes of dolls like
them. Why not create dolls that came with a story and maybe some clothes,
so that the owner could play dress-up?

Pleasant wasn’t thrilled with what was available on the market to buy for her
nieces. No Barbies with their anatomically impossible figures or
consumption-obsessed back stories for this auntie.

In a speech commemorating the company’s 25th anniversary, Pleasant

recalled the weekend she spent at her cabin sitting beside a wood stove,
where she wrote the business plan: “I have done a lot of writing in my life,
but never before or since, have words flowed so easily and so quickly. By the
end of the weekend, I knew, just simply knew, that this was a good idea.
Why? Because I would have loved it when I was a little girl myself, and as an
adult I would have loved to give it to my nieces, who I knew would have
loved it, too.”29

Pleasant’s idea pulled in sales of more than $1 million for its first Christmas
— almost recouping the $1.2 million she had put into building the venture. In
a fitting piece of irony, Barbie’s mom Mattel bought Pleasant’s company
about 12 years later.

For the 2017 fiscal year, the division generated roughly $450 million in
revenue.30

That’s a heck of a niche down!

We bet you can one-up us with examples meaningful to your own world in a
matter of moments.

Because here’s the thing: The category rule applies equally well to “small
e” ventures as it does to the big brands as we’ve mentioned many times
earlier in this manifesto.

Here’s another story we’re eager to watch unfold.

Once upon a time, there was a world of construction toys that played mainly
to boys. Then, came GoldieBlox — a maker of toys specifically constructed
to get girls interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics
(STEM) disciplines — founded in 2011 by a young woman with a personal
perspective on the problem.

Debra Sterling, who graduated Stanford University in 2005 with a degree in

engineering and product design, was inspired by her friend’s habit of playing
with her brother’s construction toys when she was a child.

There was no such thing for girls. She freely admits that she barely knew
about the field of engineering until a high-school math teacher suggested she
give it a try. In fact, her bio on the GoldieBlox website reads: “Debbie
couldn’t figure out why her math teacher thought she should be a train
conductor!”

It was embarrassing.

And, that would become Debbie’s inspiration for designing the category.

“I really believe in my concept — STEM toys for girls — but the toy industry
wasn’t as receptive,” recalled Sterling in an interview with Forbes.31 “I kept
hearing from industry veterans that my idea was a good cause, but it would
never sell. I knew that if I wanted to make GoldieBlox successful, it meant I
had to break down gender stereotypes that plague the industry. To this day,
those outdated stereotypes continue to be my biggest challenge.”

Her idea almost didn’t get off the ground. It was rejected by Y Combinator,
an organization well-known in the tech industry for funding early-stage
startups.
Huh?

Oh right, the VC universe is decidedly male-centric with its investments —

just 2% of all the funding doled out in 2017 went to female-founded firms.32

Although Debbie was angered, stunned and confused by that rejection, she
persisted. Like all legendary entrepreneurs, she’s a missionary, not
mercenary. And her intended audience has been quite receptive, even though
the first Silicon Valley bros she approached for funding couldn’t wrap their
heads around the idea.

The company (the name is a wordplay on the fairy-tale heroine Goldilocks)

blew away its original Kickstarter campaign, raising more than $285,000
with a mocked-up prototype and handmade book. As of this writing,
GoldieBlox has sold more than 1 million toys worldwide.

The company even helped the Girl Scouts develop a new STEM merit badge.

“Now I hear from parents and young kids from all over the world about how
happy they are to have GoldieBlox and how fun STEM is,” Debbie observes.
“It’s really rewarding when I receive a letter from a kid who says they want
to be an engineer when they grow up. I save every letter, every video, [and]
every drawing. They literally mean the world to me and they keep me going,
even when times get tough.”

Category pull like that doesn’t happen for most companies.

That’s because most organizations and many startups make the mistake of
chasing share in existing market categories designed by someone else. They
play a game in which they have no chance of winning from the start, because
they didn’t write the rules.

On the other hand, entrepreneurs who design their own playing field, who
write their own playbook, will find that their services and products are in
high demand. Here’s why:

Category design = Make demand

Branding = Fight for demand

Rather than trying to remarket existing construction toys to girls — by

creating a “Legos for Girls” brand, if you will — Debbie reimagined the
category by starting from scratch.

And she did it from the female point of view (POV).

She approached the category in a unique way — one that resonated with her
personally and that she could evangelize passionately and obsessively.

There are certain things that people can’t un-see or un-know.

But when the world “sees” the problem the way a category designer sees it,
the world view changes.

That’s the brilliance of successful category design.

Legendary entrepreneurs make their mark by identifying and articulating a

problem — and designing and evangelizing the solution. When that strategy
is well honed and executed, BOOM! The category crowns you its queen, as it
did with Debbie Sterling.

Once a category’s problem is defined by an entrepreneur, as we discussed

earlier in Chapter 2, the market will demand the solution — and potential
customers will turn to the consensus solution with ferocity.

Why settle for second comers?

No one’s hands needed sanitizer in 1995. Now, it’s everywhere. You. Need.
It.
Once you’re known as the “go-to” gal in your field, you’re made. You’ve
achieved a position of value and importance — in your field, local region,
neighborhood, whatever. No matter how small or big that territory.

If you look closely, you’ll see that the businesses and brands you admire the
most are almost always the ones that have designed and owned their own
niche.

“As an entrepreneur, you need to be bold,” observes Sheryl O’Loughlin, the

former CEO of Clif, who identified the market need for a protein bar
specifically formulated for women. That product, Luna, dominates its
category.

Sheryl is a serial category designer.

She was also behind Plum Organics (now owned by Campbell’s Soup),
which pioneered the healthy baby-food category in convenient, squeezable
containers; and REBBL, a line of beverages made from “super herbs” that
boost human immune systems.

She’s niched down several times as a serial entrepreneur in the food business,
making Sheryl a seriously successful niche downer!

“You’re doing something that no one else has ever tried before and you need
to believe in it in your heart and soul or else you’re never going to get anyone
to come on this epic adventure…” Sheryl shared during a Legends & Losers
conversation.33 “However, that has to be placed in concert with humility,
because humility is about learning. And, the best startups are companies that
learn.”

Design The Perfect Fit

Some people seem to naturally find their place in the world. As kids, their
“talents” become apparent, and they get really good at those talents. They
study, train and ultimately get a great job or start a company doing their
thing. If this is you, congratulations, you don’t really need to read the rest of
this chapter.

But if you grew up on the island of misfit toys, you should stick with us.

Those of us who can’t find our place in the world must make our place in
the world.

Meet Christopher’s friend Dushka Zapata. She is a successful marketing-and-

public-relations executive, a communications coach and a frequent public
speaker. For years, she flirted with the idea of writing books, and eventually
she quit her job to indulge that fantasy. Courageous!

Soon, Dushka found herself drowning in a sea of relative obscurity with

thousands of other writers yearning to be published.

Now, she’s surfing a wave of bestsellers written almost entirely as responses

to questions from her readers.

That’s because Dushka imagined a new place for herself on the digital
bookshelf.

She designed a new category of writer by combining her unique POV with a
new platform: Quora, a website where questions are asked, edited, answered
and organized by a self-selecting community of users. Ask and ye shall
receive.

Today, Dushka is a self-dubbed “amateur social writer.” A category of her

own design.

That word amateur was a very deliberate choice on her part: by definition, it’s
someone who does something for love rather than money. She created her
own niche as an author by responding directly to people’s questions on
Quora…for free.

Yes, free.

Dushka would be the first to declare that she does not offer advice. She
shares what has worked for her personally, with the hope that it will work for
other people. Her books include How to Be Ferociously Happy and Amateur:
An inexpert, inexperienced, unauthoritative view of life.

Traditional writers hide from their readers behind keyboards while getting
paid to publish books. Dushka is the opposite.

“I love writing so much that I could do it without anyone ever seeing it

because that’s what I love,” she told Christopher in the first-ever episode34 of
the Legends & Losers podcast. “But, I think that what happened in the course
of me writing and getting a reaction from it is that I realized that I also lived
for connection.”

Almost everything Dushka writes is in direct response to a question from

Quora — something someone cares about. And, she makes herself available
to her readers almost daily.

Dushka’s work has been viewed over 104 million times on Quora alone. And,
she’s a bestselling essay author because of that notoriety.

By way of comparison, Hillary Clinton’s official Quora posts have roughly

32 million views.

Dushka made a difference to millions by parlaying what she loves to do into

a new category she created. (Experience more of her personal journey in
Legends & Losers Episode 96.35)

Be Driven By A Higher Purpose

As he wrote in the “Foreword” to Niche Down, motivational speaker Hal
Elrod’s life and career were transformed when he decided to be different —
to craft his message around a philosophy that was so personal that no one else
could copy it directly.

His best-selling book, The Miracle Morning, built on what Hal learned
coming back from a horrific car accident that literally (albeit briefly) claimed
his life in 1999 and chronicled how he lifted himself out of the deep
depression he suffered a decade later during the Great Recession.

Hal’s epiphany came while listening to a speech by the late entrepreneur and
business coach Jim Rohn, who once said:

“Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal

development because success is something you attract by the person you
become.”

With the help of his mentor, Hal realized he wasn’t dedicating enough time in
his life to become the person he aspired to be.

And that provided the framework for the unique philosophy he advocates in
his book.

As Hal related in a November 2017 episode of Legends & Losers36:

“If we’re measuring success on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the
success that we want – and I don’t mean just business or professional
success, I mean our level of success in our relationships, in our health, in our
fitness, [and in] our energy levels, right. If we’re measuring on a scale of one
to 10, we all want level 10 success.

“Nobody’s like, ‘I don’t want to be too happy. I’ll be like a level 7. That’s
good for me. I don’t want too much money, or all my relatives coming out of
the woodwork. I’ll do like a level 8. Don’t be too rich.’ No, we all want level
10 success. But what I realized is we want level 10 success, but our level of
personal development is typically very short of that.”

Hal’s idea was different than what other motivational experts were espousing
— in large part because it was so personal. He evangelized this philosophy
everywhere because he believed in it and lived it himself.

Today, Hal’s book is an international bestseller available in 27 languages.

More than 500,000 people in 70 countries practice his suggestions.

Now, he’s no longer just a good generic motivational speaker, author and
podcaster.

He’s The Miracle-Morning guy.

Hal niched down, and his business scaled up into a category of one that he
has scaled into a legendary business through relationships and partnerships.

Allow us to tug at your heartstrings with another example that speaks to our
souls, a father-and-son e-commerce operation founded in the fall of 2016 and
based out of Melville, New York, called John’s Crazy Socks.

This is a classic, niche business: Don’t visit if you’re expecting to replenish

your boring, white gym socks.

But, it’s also a cause. The company donates 5 percent of its earnings to
Special Olympics.

That’s because John Lee Cronin (the son part of this start-up duo) is a young
man with Down Syndrome, who has loved colorful footwear his entire life.
The company was his idea; he suggested it to his father, Mark, after taking a
class in retailing at his local high school. It just so happened that Dad
specializes in marketing and business plans for niche online stores. After
some back-and-forth, John’s Crazy Socks was born.
“Every day, we’re out showing what people can achieve when you give them
a chance,” Mark told a Canadian news organization37.

John’s Crazy Socks38 now sells more than 1,200 different designs —
including flying pigs, an homage to grilled cheese, and Donald-Trump socks
with hair you can style. Its products have their way onto the feet of some
pretty famous folk, including Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and
President George H.W. Bush.

In just two short years, it became a multimillion-dollar business: in 2018, it

easily donated more than $100,000 to various charities. (By the way, for a
lesson in how to be transparent, check out the John’s Crazy Socks monthly
“giving” report.) The company has also inserted itself into national policy
discussions about wages and labor conditions for disabled people.

You’ll hear more about John and Mark in our next chapter about how to
reveal your super powers. Don’t worry, you’re almost there.

Paint a World View That Others Can See, Too

How do you want people to see you? How do you want to describe the
problem you solve?

This is where a point-of-view exercise can be incredibly clarifying, helping

you to figure out who you are and to develop the story you tell about your
personal category.

Start with your story. Write it down and hone it until it sounds like a
tight, conversational, presentation.

Focus on articulating the problem in a super-compelling way.

Refine and perfect your story to the point where if you had just two minutes
to position yourself, you could go through your POV and anyone would “get”
you.

When Spanx founder Sarah Blakely scored her first big sales-pitch
opportunity at Neiman Marcus, she had just 10 minutes to make her case.
Shen practiced long and hard to take all the doubt words — especially “I
think” rather than “I believe”— out of her presentation.

Even then, she had to resort to her impromptu demonstration in the restroom,
slipping in and out of her prototype in the stall to win the buyer over and to
seal the deal.

The art of Sarah’s pitch was also instrumental in winning over her first
business partner, the mill owner who helped fulfill her first orders. Even
though he scoffed initially, when he later repeated the idea at the dinner table,
his daughters urged him to reconsider.

“If you’ve got an idea, or you’re trying to mobilize other people to help you,
you have got to be extremely passionate and have energy when you’re talking
to them,” she recalled in her podcast interview with James Altucher.39 “And,
smile and be infectious with how enthusiastic you are.”

Next, set the ideal vision of what you think the market category you
represent should look like.

Why would you accept the state of your chosen category as it looks now?
Instead, why wouldn’t you envision the category the way that you want it to
look?

Assuming you achieve what you set out to do, and you actually serve the
people you want to serve in the way you want to serve them, wouldn’t the
category look different?

After GOJO Industries designed the new category of liquid soap, they made it
“gross” to pick up “hand soap” in a public bathroom. POW.
The entire category changes its mind. And moves from hand soap to liquid
soap. GOJO didn’t compete with traditional soap makers. It reimagined the
problem. Designed a new category and changed the definition of what soap
is.

Hint: If it doesn’t look different, you’re delivering the same solution that
everybody else already is offering. You’re not really designing a new
category.

Finally, name the category you want to dominate.

Language changes how we think about things, so it’s incredibly important.

Ideally, you want to create a completely different bucket that isn’t already
filled with other brands or service providers.

There are millions of bars in the world. There’s only one “original arcade
bar”.

Let’s reconsider Picasso, the legendary designer of the cubist movement.

There’s one interpretation that suggests his art was crazy, and there’s another
interpretation that says it was absolutely genius and the future of art. As one
of the pseudo-musicians in the greatest, fake rock band in the world, Spinal
Tap, proclaims for posterity, “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”

The difference between those interpretations was Pablo Picasso’s ability to

position his work in an entirely new and modern category of art.

Picasso designed, and then dominated, the category of cubism.

He endures as a personal brand because cubism made him a brand. His type
of art required a whole new set of lenses to look at it and was completely
different from what came before. By design, not by accident.
In a similar way, reggae was a different category of music created by the
musicians affiliated with the late Bob Marley.

He’s the category designer and still the king, years after his death. Punk rock
was a new niche in rock & roll pioneered by The Ramones in the United
States and the Sex Pistols in England. And what’s rock & roll itself? A
category of music that went mainstream courtesy of Elvis Presley, who
embraced and co-opted a breakthrough style originally pioneered by African
American artists. Technically, early rock & roll was a mélange of gospel,
jump blues, boogie woogie, and rhythm and blues.)

But over time, Elvis Presley literally became known as the King of Rock
& Roll, because of his role in defining and designing the category.

People in art or music refer to these music types as genres, but you can also
think of them as new categories — niches that these artists came to embody.

Designing a personal category means distinguishing yourself as the leading

king or queen of that niche. It means positioning yourself before you’re
positioned.

Here’s a rhetorical question: Would you rather have people think of you as
just another painter, or would you like them to remember you as the inventor
of cubism?

Whether you’re a CEO, accountant, inventor, developer, entrepreneur,

athlete, author or speaker, the need for a strong and thoughtful POV about a
category of your making — one that is part of your ethos — applies to you.

For ideas about how to become a category evangelist who could rival the late
co-founder Steve Jobs when it comes to converting an audience, turn the
page.

28 Harvard Business Review, “Category Creation is the Ultimate Growth Strategy,” Sept. 26, 2011.
29 YouTube, “Pleasant Rowland speaks at American Girl 25th anniversary tribute,” Nov. 29, 2011.
30 Mattel web site, Results for fiscal year 2017, Feb. 1, 2018.
31 Forbes, “How the Founder of GoldieBlox Is Creating The Next Generation Of Women In STEM,”
Oct. 11, 2017.
32 Fortune, “Female Founders Got 2% of Venture Capital Dollars in 2017,” Jan. 31, 2018.
33 Legends & Losers, “One CEO’s Journey From The Dark Side To Killing It, With Sheryl
O’Loughlin,” Sept. 7, 2017.
34 Legends & Losers, “Getting in the Game & Achieving Ferocious Happiness with Dushka Zapata,”
Feb. 21, 2017.
35 Legends & Losers, “Dushka Zapata on Happiness and Comfort,” Nov. 23, 2017.
36 Legends & Losers, “Hal Elrod on Overcoming Cancer, the 5-Minute Rule & Achieving Level 10
Success,” Nov. 9, 2017.
37 CTV News Channel, “Man with Down Syndrome owns multi-million-dollar sock business,” April
12, 2018.
38 Legends & Losers, “John’s Crazy Socks,” May 21, 2018.
39 James Altucher, “How To Get a Billion-Dollar Idea,” February 2017.
 4.
GO FORTH AND NICHE DOWN
“Don’t strike while the iron is hot, make the iron hot by striking.”
— W.B. Yeats, legendary Irish poet and Nobel Prize laureate

Don’t Keep Your Superpower Hidden

If you really and truly solve a problem in a new way or you solve a problem
that people didn’t even know needed to be solved, then by definition the
market is not ready for you.

The market must be taught to accept you, and it’s your responsibility to be
that teacher.

After all, you’re trying to reswizzle people’s brains to see the problem you’ve
defined through your eyes, and then to look to you and your company for the
solution.

Christopher’s previous career as a public tech company Chief Marketing

Officer (CMO) — in the early days of the digital everything evolution —
offers a great illustration of how this process of market conditioning looks for
youpreneurs or for those of you niching down on your own.

He made sure the world understood that he was a different kind of CMO, not
just another pushy pitch person with insights about how to create great
messaging or to reinforce a company’s relevance within an established
market. Christopher’s POV was: “I don’t solve the problem that most
marketing executives solve. I help design and dominate categories.”

By adopting that mantra, Christopher distinguished himself as unique.

He went from being one of thousands of tech-marketing people scrambling to

influence sales in the rapidly expanding information-technology industry to
being one of the world’s first technology category designers.

Here’s how a typical conversation between Christopher and a CEO

considering his skills would go. (We know, because he was there.) “Look,
Mr. CEO. If you’re lucky, you can find a good CMO who keeps the trains
running on time, fills the sales pipeline with qualified prospects, builds your
brand and works well with customers and analysts. And if that’s what you’re
looking for, you should go hire that person. Not me.”

By now, that chief something-or-other would be intrigued or at least

incredulous. We can hear the inner dialogue: “A marketing executive telling
me to hire someone else? Aren’t those sorts of things table stakes for what I
need? Hell, I’ve got to hear more. This guy could solve a problem I didn’t
even realize I had… until now.”

Exactly!

And Christopher would continue with this argument: “I know how to do all
that, but that’s not where I add value. As you know, in every company’s life,
particularly in the tech business, there’s often a 24-month window where it’s
going to get into a very serious category battle — who’s gonna dominate this
emerging space? I have a black belt in that. I know how to design and
dominate categories, and I know how to take existing categories and redesign
them to tilt the market agenda to our advantage. That’s my superpower.”

When you have that type of conversation, you’ve just changed the
playing field.
Context is everything.

Ask yourself, are we having the right conversation?

When the conversation was around this question, “Can we wash our hands
with water?” There was an answer. Soap.

Or “bar soap” after the designers of “liquid soap” pulled a niche down. And
liquid soap became a new category when the question changed to “Can we
wash our hands with water in a way that is not disgusting and wasteful?”

Ta-da! A new category is designed.

As GOJO has proven, you can reposition and destroy your competition by
exposing a problem your prospect couldn’t articulate or maybe even
identify.

From there, you show your customer — whether that customer is a consumer
or another business professional — how you’re going to solve her or his
problem.

Niche down.

Every market category works the way it does now because it got
designed that way, either accidentally or on purpose.

No one knew why they needed an iPhone until the late great Steve Jobs
showed them. But once he and Apple conditioned the market to see the
problem that its “smartphone” solved, the market clamored to get their hands
on the solution.

He redesigned the problem.

And that was the beginning of the end40 for a very worthy mobile-technology
company that hails from the Great White North (aka Canada), the former
Research in Motion (aka RIM).

Its BlackBerry, while it was a very worthy gadget and beloved by the tech
sales set, faded into has-been status because Apple changed the idea of how
average humans should interact with their mobile-communications device.
Instead of pecking away with your thumbs at a teeny, tiny keyboard, why not
just touch the screen to navigate through messages and applications? So
much simpler and more intuitive!

The BlackBerry primarily solved a mobile-email problem. Jobs created the

smartphone category by designing a piece of technology that addressed a
different problem — how to live a mobile life. That required computing,
communications, millions of niche apps, and a glass, touch-screen
experience. All in one device, not several different gadgets.

The BlackBerry went from looking awesome to looking like a Ford Edsel.

Apple didn’t compete in a traditional way. It did not get into a feature or price
war like most tech companies do. It redesigned the definition of a mobile
phone. It had a different point of view.

RIM’s big mistake was assuming that Apple’s “consumer” product couldn’t
possibly matter to its core customer base, businesses and government
agencies. To be fair, the BlackBerry wasn’t knocked out immediately, it
staggered around the ring for almost a decade, mainly because of its rock-
solid security software.

But what RIM’s executive team failed to intuit was that many people would
decide they didn’t want to bother using two different mobile phones — one
for their “professional” existence and one for their “personal” life. Back in
2007, when the original iPhone arrived, the line was already blurring for
many people, and the iPhone made the boundaries even murkier.

Since the legendary “1984” advertisement that introduced the original

Macintosh computer, Apple has set the standard for advertising technology,
and its early campaign for the original iPhone continued that tradition.

The “Hello” teaser spent a few moments establishing the telephone as an

indispensable and ownership-worthy device, by showing celebrities like
Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe and Sarah Jessica Parker greeting callers, and
then cutting to a ringing iPhone.

After the official launch, Apple didn’t waste time on spots espousing the
device’s groundbreaking specs, even though there were scads of them.
Rather, it leaned on videos that showcased the gadget’s usefulness for the
thwarting the ordinary-yet-crucial challenges of everyday living, like looking
up the phone number for a nearby seafood take-out restaurant or for helping
ordinary people lighten the load in their briefcases and knapsacks like this
one from an early testimonial series.

It took less than one decade for Apple to sell more than 1 billion41 iPhones.
All because the company conditioned people to equate this brand-new
category — a touch-enabled smartphone that also doubled as a media player
and an Internet-access tool — with the iPhone.

Conditioning the market is the opposite of going to market.

Going to market means playing by someone else’s rules on someone else’s

playing field. The game is automatically rigged — anyone aside from the
category queen is going to fail until someone steps in to design a new
category.

Conditioning the market is the process of teaching the market to think about a
problem and a solution in a very particular way. Your way.

How To Grab Attention (Aka, Make Lightning Strike!)

OK, dear readers, we can hear your audible and skeptical grumbling, “But
Apple has millions of dollars to spend on advertising, there’s no way that a
small or smallish entrepreneur can make that sort of impact.”

Tell that to Justin Esch and Dave Lefkow, the founders of J&D’s Foods, who
double-handedly designed the “bacon-salt” seasoning category. And bacon-
flavored mayonnaise. And bacon-tasting lip balm. (No, we’re not kidding
about that last example.)

Did we mention that all of these products are vegetarian and kosher-certified?
Not qualities you’d normally associate with bacon. But people liked their
idea: The duo’s initial batch of 5,000 Bacon Salt jars sold out in five days.

Their venture started out as somewhat of a goof — backed with $5,000 from
a prize-winning submission on “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and
grounded in the notion that bacon makes just about everything taste better.
(An idea hatched during a Jewish wedding.)

And it’s only natural that many of the pair’s early marketing stunts — like
the Bacon Suit they wore to give away early samples at college football
games — started as jokes.

The aforementioned bacon lip balm was actually one of the products created
for J&D’s annual April Fool’s Day campaign, but the company ended up
selling hundreds of thousands of the tubes. The company’s first April-Fool’s-
Day promotion was for a “forthcoming” bacon-flavored personal lubricant
dubbed “Bacon Lube” — the team encouraged people to sign up as beta
testers at this email address: keepitsizzlin@baconsalt.com.

So many people signed up for the waiting list (more than 5,000 people were
pretty hot over the idea), that the company actually had to figure out a way of
making the product, Lefkow told the Huffington Post42. (By the way, don’t
try the email, it doesn’t work anymore!)
“Despite being hilarious, it was a business move,” Dave said during that
interview. “We launched the lube with one of our mainstream, food products,
Bacon Croutons, and that’s one of the best things we could do for the brand.

Launching Bacon Croutons isn’t exactly newsworthy, but introducing Bacon

Lube at the same time means getting on 500 radio stations, on newscasts and
in papers, and we’re getting exposure as J&D’s, the makers of Bacon Lube,
but also makers of Bacon Salt, Bacon Croutons and Bacon Ranch.”

The founders hired interns to help brainstorm its novelty ideas — which
eventually included a bacon-lined coffin, moustache wax and condoms. And
the April-Fool’s-Day stunt became an annual tradition while Justin and Dave
still controlled the company. (They’ve since sold it to an organization that
specializes in representing niche foods.)

This sort of campaign is a classic example of what in Play Bigger the boys
call a “lightning strike” — a concentrated bolt of energy intended to
shock the market and grab attention fast.

On a company level, a lightning strike is a concentrated set of integrated sales

and marketing actions designed to move the market from where it is now to
where you want it to be, with the aim of establishing you and your
organization as the category designer.

A lightning strike includes a very focused set of activities delivered in a

very short period of time, designed to produce the biggest impact.

Figuring out when to strike requires constant vigilance. John and Mark, the
son-and-father sock-selling duo we introduced in Chapter 3, have proven
themselves masters at seizing the moment.

When John read an article in 2017 about President Bill Clinton gifting his
predecessor President George H.W. Bush with a pair of wacky socks, he sent
a selection of the company’s inventory to the former President’s office. After
all, this was the President who signed the American with Disabilities Act into
law.

In 2018, President Bush’s staff reached out, looking for some more. The
President wore one of the pairs in that batch, the Down Syndrome Super
Hero design, on World Down Syndrome day and tweeted this comment along
with a photo: “Yesterday, I was inspired by my friend John Cronin to wear
these beauties from @JohnsCrazySocks marking World Down Syndrome
Day. A great sock supporting a wonderful cause.”

President Bush also wore a book-themed pair of John’s socks to the late First
Lady, Barbara Bush’s, funeral as a tribute to her commitment to family
literacy. And in late April 2018, in the days after she was laid to rest, that
design was rebranded as “Library Socks for Literacy,” with 100 percent of
the profits going to the Barbara Bush Literacy Foundation.

Executing a lightning strike often means setting a huge, publicly-

declared goal. And it means seizing the moment, a moment that’s right
for your specific niche.

When Pleasant Rowland launched American Girl, she naturally picked the
lucrative, holiday-gift season to make her impact. Rather than trying to find
space on crowded retail shelves, she opted for mail order. Sure, that limited
her potential orders, but it also created the perfect storm for any toy company:
a sold-out season with every doll claimed by a family.

It was only after the category was established, that American Girl started
establishing itself with retail partners and the backstories of each doll
expanded the potential-partner options. Does this belong in a bookstore or a
toy store? Hey, why not both?

Once a date for a lightning strike is set, you will have to mobilize
thoughtfully and deliberately to pull it off.
Deadlines make shit happen.

Bigly.

Here’s another example of a lightning strike that set up one of Christopher’s

friends for a legendary career. Mike Maples, Jr. moved to Silicon Valley
from Austin, Texas, with the goal of starting a successful venture-capital
fund.

He immediately started developing his ecosystem in the venture world,

because in that world — like most worlds — you can’t operate on your own.
Other people make us successful.

To power up those connections more quickly, Mike planned a rather

opportunistic lightning strike: He invited everybody he had built relationships
with, including his new ecosystem in Silicon Valley, to his spectacular 40th
birthday party.

Mike was front and center, playing host and talking with guests about the
deals he was doing. That got the dominos falling even faster for his company,
Floodgate, which specializes in early-stage funding for entrepreneurs trying
to establish new categories — often long before the rest of the world believes
in them. It calls these sorts of entrepreneurs “prime movers” with the ability
to create “massive outcomes from nothing.”

Among its many investments: Twitter, wireless-speakers company Sonos and

ridesharing giant Lyft.

Influence The Influencers

Every bit of success we enjoy comes from other people.

Customers say, “Yes,” and give us money in exchange for services.

Employers say, “Yes,” and hire us. Other people in our industry think we’re
awesome and send us other customers, prospects, partners or employees.

It’s a virtuous cycle.

And that’s why a great category inspires a healthy ecosystem of influencers

— maybe we should call them loyal subjects — around its queen or king.
That ecosystem might include customers, suppliers, developers, partners and
both real and virtual communities of interest.

Many small business owners join networking groups, lead-sharing and/or

mastermind groups. When people do this, they are growing their ecosystem.

Take the legendary “Surf Shop” founded in San Francisco by Jack O’Neill
back in 1952.

More than just a place to buy surfboards, the shop there — and later farther
south in Santa Cruz, California, where it moved within 10 years — became a
place where the local surfing community would hang out to trade stories and
tips.

It would also become the real-world proving ground for O’Neill’s new
category of cold-water swim attire, neoprene wetsuits.

Jack O’Neill felt so strongly about the importance of this gathering place for
building credibility that he trademarked the term “surf shop” in 1962
(although he never hassled others for stealing the term). Jack was an intuitive
category designer.

The wetsuit slowly transcended the original sport, making big waves in
recreational diving. (Full disclosure: Heather is an O’Neill customer who is
proud to say she still fits into the 3-millimeter full-skin she bought in 2000
when she took up diving. And Christopher’s first wetsuit was an O’Neill; he
wears their products with pride.)
“Jack decided he had to become a stand-up member of the community,” his
son Pat told The San Francisco Chronicle for a profile43 about the late
entrepreneur published in May 2012. “He’s always got along really well with
people from all walks of life. As a result, he became friends with people from
all over the social and political spectrum. He had friends that were wealthy
and powerful in Santa Cruz and people who lived in cars.”

More than 50 years later, the operation is still embedded deeply into the
community — other local businesses orchestrate their own promotions to
coincide with the store’s annual Labor Day parking-lot sale. It’s still
innovating with the future in mind. The company in 2016 started a brilliant
loyalty program for surf-going moms and dads who outfit their kids with
O’Neill togs. As junior grows out of his or her wetsuit, they can be traded for
a credit of up to half-off the purchase of a new one. (This isn’t a one-time
thing, it can be repeated year after year, until your mini-you grows into the
adult size.) When Jack O’Neill passed away at the age of 92, in summer
2017, thousands of surfers paddled out to sea in his honor. Check out this
“aw”-inspiring footage44 of the event uploaded by the company. If you look
closely, you might see Christopher in the water!

The key is to build an ecosystem purposefully like Jack O’Neill did, not
by default.

Strategically surround yourself with people you trust.

Treat them better than you treat yourself.

Form bonds that go beyond the walls of your company.

Treat your ecosystem like customers. Maybe even more importantly than
customers.

Deliver something of value. When you need help, your ecosystem will be
there to help you and vice versa.
Rich Novak, a pioneering entrepreneur and avid surfer from Jack O’Neill’s
home turf (or shall we say surf?) consciously and proactively organized the
emerging skateboarding category45. Back when Rich started shredding, the
main equipment used by enthusiasts was roller skates coupled with two by
fours. Rich helped the category “tip” by mobilizing component suppliers —
you can thank him for big breakthroughs in wheel technology during the
1970s — and convincing his competitors to collaborate on standards.

Rich ended up starting multiple companies within the category’s supply chain
along the way. When you see problems in ways others don’t, why not fix
them?

For example, when the major skateboard magazine that Rich relied on to
advertise his various skateboard brands (Santa Cruz, Creature and
Independent Truck Co.) pivoted away from its original editorial mission, he
helped start another publication in 1981 to fill that gap. As of this writing,
Thrasher magazine is still the “skater’s bible” and the Thrasher brand can be
seen on t-shirts, backpacks, sweatshirts and more around the world.

The multi-million-dollar company cofounded by Rich in 1973, NHS Fun

Factory, is the oldest company in the world dedicated to selling skateboards.
All because Rich never stopped thinking about the ecosystem.

“They built the industry before they built their business,” the company’s
current CEO Rob Denike told The Santa Cruz Sentinel46 in October 2013.
(Rob was an early product tester who worked his way up in the ranks.) “It
was just raw entrepreneurial spirit. They took it from a fad to an actual
business and, as a group, decided they were going to focus on growing the
industry. If they were good businessmen, they would get a piece of that pie.”

A similar philosophy was behind the collaboration we mentioned earlier

between the Girls Scouts of the USA and GoldieBlox, which is laser-focused
on encouraging girls to learn more about science, technology, engineering
and mathematics (STEM) at a far earlier age. It’s part of a larger series of
STEM-related badges47 adopted by the organization in summer 2017,
encouraging girls to code software, design robots and race cars, and collect
environmental data.

GoldieBlox partnered with the organization to create mechanical-engineering

kits to help with six of the badges. The relationship was personally
championed and cultivated by founder Debbie Sterling, herself a former Girl
Scout.

“The goal is to get girls inventing and learning what it means to be an

engineer,” Debbie told Forbes.48 “By earning these badges, we are removing
the intimidating factor and building girls’ confidence with STEM.”

And it reinforces GoldiBlox’s core point of view, which positions the

company as a STEM missionary for girls.

TerraCycle, the waste management innovator we introduced in Chapter 2,

offers another illustration of how to build influence in a mutually beneficial
way. And this strategy was not adopted by accident.

“You should only do what is unique to you. Logistics is definitely not unique
to us,” Szaky told Heather in their interview for this book. “We are allergic to
capital expenditures. It is the death of innovation.”

For the purposes of this discussion, let’s focus on two of the communities
that TerraCycle has cultivated to help with the big waste-collection problem:
consumer-product companies looking to make sure less of their packaging
winds up in landfills or the ocean and schools seeking new fundraising
opportunities. (There are many others, as the company outlines well on its
website.)

Both are critical for collecting trash like depleted chip bags, empty juice
pouches and candy wrappers and other items that people know they shouldn’t
send to landfills, but for which there is no clearly defined recycling or reuse
system. And they are synergistic.

TerraCycle’s corporate-partnership programs have snagged some very heavy

hitters from the consumer-goods world, including Procter & Gamble (the
giant maker of everything from Head & Shoulders shampoo to Pampers
diapers) and Colgate-Palmolive (which sells toothpaste and dishwashing soap
under those brands).

Both of those companies, in collaboration with their distribution and sales

channels, are long-time sponsors of TerraCycle’s drive to recycle or
“upcycle” their packaging.

In other words, they pay to help TerraCycle run initiatives that inspire
individuals to become garbage collectors.

An example of how this works is the “Recycled Playground Challenge,”

which TerraCycle runs annually in collaboration with Colgate and
supermarket chain ShopRite.

The objective of the contest: collect as many empty toothpaste tubes, dental-
floss dispensers and other oral-product containers as possible.

The participating schools receive credit for the volume of packaging they
collect during the three-month drive — the grand prize is a playground made
out of recycled materials. The program actually runs year-round. Schools can
earn donations for clubs and causes by participating, but the contest builds
awareness for the plastics-recycling problem.

Transparency Translates Into Traction

We’re going to start this section with a confession: one of our biggest, shared
pet peeves about many entrepreneurs and startup ventures is how difficult
many of them make it to communicate with them or their company.

Yes, they’ve certainly checked off the “must-have-a-website” line item on the
Startup Must-Do 101 List. They may even have invested in some fancy-
schmancy e-commerce technology du jour.

But many of them have missed the memo that it might actually be useful to
include contact information that bloggers, journalists, customers, potential
partners (you get the idea) might actually use to make a connection.

News flash: It’s really stupid to issue a press release about company news
without offering a hint about where someone can have a question answered!

But many, many, many entrepreneurs do this (even some really compelling
niche businesses we tried to contact for this book). It’s infuriating!

No matter how much you may personally eschew social media — we get it,
the messages dominating Twitter and Facebook ain’t always pretty, and
people are getting pretty fed up with visiting — you ignore them at your
peril.

Make no mistake, building a substantive “digital body of work” (essays you

share on the Medium network, expertise you share on the Quora community
site, images you share on the Instagram photo service, podcasts you’re a
guest on, TED Talks or TED-like talks you give, etc.) and earning “social
cred” (what third parties are saying about you in those places and elsewhere)
really matters.

Because today, the first thing most people do when they get introduced to
you is Google your ass! Or Bing your butt. What happens after that impacts
everything.

We human beings make snap, often unconscious, decisions.

If after searching on your name, people see your bio on your company’s
website, your LinkedIn profile, blogs you’ve written, podcasts you’ve been
on, videos your TED/TEDx talks, profiles of you and your business written
by legitimate publications, examples of you guest-lecturing at high schools
and colleges, references to your book on Amazon, your thoughtful posts on
Quora, etc. — all this kind of stuff creates a very powerful, positive
impression that you and / or your company are a force to be reckoned with.

On the other hand, if people search your name and all they see is a picture of
you on Facebook with a mullet hairdo, wearing a Poison t-shirt at a Metallica
concert, you’re in trouble.

Building both social cred and a meaningful digital body of work are
important and will become increasingly seminal.

This was one of the first things that consumer-category-design expert Eddie
Yoon, founder of Eddie Would Grow, spent time developing when he parted
ways with his big-name former employer, Cambridge Group.

Eddie knew that in order to differentiate his services from those offered by
the mammoth business-consulting companies, he needed to niche down: He’s
a specialist in helping companies cultivate what he calls “superconsumers”
— highly passionate and profitable customers who help drive a significant
portion of any given market-category’s profit.

Eddie was the Episode 49 & 50 guest on Legends & Losers (where the main
focus was on category design, and he had plenty to say!), but we also chatted
him up separately for good measure. His book, Superconsumers: A Simple,
Speedy and Sustainable Path to Growth, dovetails well with many of the
themes we explore here in Niche Down.

His advice on how to build a digital-content strategy? Share your point of

view, but don’t blatantly try to sell your product.
“Be a missionary, not a mercenary,” he told us.

“If you are a subject-matter expert. And you have a point of view. And your
point of view is intended to be at its heart a generous act, you believe that
there is an opportunity or you believe that there is a crisis. And you are trying
to call attention to it. And you have enough expertise to back you up. That
will be received and go more viral … then [the message from] anyone who is
a mercenary” trying to push his or her agenda or product.

A personal note from Heather: Putting on my editor’s hat for a moment, I can
say with authority that many startups opt for the mercenary rather than the
missionary position when they pitch “bylines” (the code word used by many
marketers to describe articles that promote their company’s point of view).
No credible publication will publish that sort of story without somehow
flagging it as sponsored or advertorial in nature. Sure, sites will publish them,
but most people recognize them for what they are — advertisements in
disguise. What gets my attention and respect as a journalist is reading an
essay from someone who has a genuinely unique point of view, something
that convinces me to think differently about a particular market or business
issue. So, choose wisely.

Do yourself a favor and invest some time visiting the typical digital gathering
places for the community you’re hoping to influence.

Here are some of the questions you should ask: Do these prospective
customers interact regularly on the LinkedIn professional network? Do they
broadcast their favorite life moments on Instagram? Or do they share wish
lists and recipes on Pinterest bulletin boards? Are they looking for help on
Quora, like the thousands of readers who now buy books from Quora queen
Dushka Zapata (who you met in Chapter 3)?

At least seven in 10 Americans use social media for those activities and
more, according to ongoing data49 collected by the Pew Research Center.
That compares with just 5% back in 2005, when Pew began collecting
information about the influence of the social sphere. For all its controversy,
Facebook remains the dominant network (with 68% of U.S. adults gathering
there).

But Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn each influence about one-third of those
who spend time online, the research shows, and they often catalyze much
more specific communities of interest.

Exhibit A: Semihandmade, an interior-design company launched in 2011 for

the explicit purpose of creating “custom” doors and drawer fronts for basic
Ikea kitchen, bathroom and closet systems. They look handmade, but are
actually embellishments of stuff that’s off the shelf.

How’s that for a monster niche down?

Founder and custom cabinet maker John McDonald was on the leading edge
of the Ikea hacking movement50 — the quest by interior designers to
transform off-the-shelf items from the ubiquitous Swedish furniture maker
into something unique. Five years later, his company had handled more than
3,000 renovations. You can find regular updates about success stories on the
company’s blog, and photos of those projects are liberally posted all over
Instagram (it has more than 36,600 followers as of May 2018) and Pinterest.

But the company’s biggest coup (so far) is the relationship it has built with
Los Angeles-based interior designer-cum-lifestyle blogger Sarah Sherman
Samuel — whose posts have been “shared and repinned” by millions of
people. She discovered Semihandmade in 2013 while working on a personal
project and, in early 2018, started collaborating with the company on a
branded product line.

“We met Sarah in 2013 when she was remodeling her Venice bungalow,”
John says. “All we did was make her cabinet doors. Sarah painted them,
installed the cabinets, styled the room and shot the photos. Sarah’s
traditional, yet contemporary kitchen, went viral.”

And it’s a perfect example of how exposure on social media can help
establish a niche.

Declare Your Value

As we’ve explored in Chapter 1, one of the essential strengths of a niched-

down business is that you don’t have to play the “my-price-is-better-than-
your-price” game.

The reality is that you’ll still need to figure out what to charge customers for
your product or service, unless you’ve decided to operate as a charity. But
even in a non-profit, you have to establish a problem people care about, if
you want them to fund the solution!

So when you’re selling a product or service for which there is no competition

— like the first-ever liquid soap or personalized Ikea bling or footless
pantyhose — what are the factors you should consider in the pricing formula?

We explored this question in an interview with Rafi Mohammed, a long-time

expert in pricing strategy who has worked with a gazillion Fortune 500-type
brands on this problem. Rafi has written two nationally-acclaimed practical
guides about this topic, The Art of Pricing: How to Find the Hidden Profits to
Grow Your Business, and The 1% Windfall: How Successful Companies Use
Price to Profit and Grow.

Before we get to his advice, let’s ponder this hypothetical shopping dilemma.

It’s Friday morning, and you’ve been on the road the entire week talking up
your niche — including several late-night dinners and early-morning
breakfast meetings and lots of encounters in between. You’ve got one more
push ahead before you board the plane home. You could really use an energy
boost, at least to make it through the morning.

You’re in the hotel concession where you’re presented with several liquid
options to get you there: a $2.50 cup of large cup of coffee, a $2.25 bottle of
cold, carbonated caffeine and sugar, or a $2.99 bottlelet of 5-Hour Energy.

We don’t really care what your personal answer is, but the prices are close
enough to each other that the decision is going to come down to one of really
personal preference — one guided by questions that have more to do with
matters of taste like: Are you counting calories? Are you concerned about
your intake of artificial substances? Or do you enjoy the taste of coffee?

While we’re not going to launch into a detailed treatise on retailing or pricing
strategy — that’s something you’ll find in Rafi’s books — the fact that those
prices are so close was no accident.

Price is a declaration of value to the customer. And you must explain

your rationale if you want to win.

In this example, the 5-Hour Energy is differentiated as unique (or “different”)

because of its slightly higher price tag. But it’s not so expensive that those of
us who would rather substitute a two-ounce-ish, fruit-flavored combo shot of
various amino acids and nutrients for an eight-ounce cup of coffee loaded
with cream and sugar won’t buy it.

It’s also an illustration of why niche entrepreneurs need to understand the

economic dynamics of “those who do it the traditional way” really well, and
then pick a price point that covers their operating expenses (that’s a given,
unless you’re concerned with amassing share quickly at the expense of profit)
and declares uniqueness without being too much more expensive than the
existing options. “Price has very little to do with cost. Price has everything to
do with the next best alternatives,” Mohammed argues.
Be prepared to articulate your differentiation.

That means you need to be able to look someone straight in the eye and share
your value proposition in such a compelling way that it converts that prospect
into a believer, a customer, and a convert who can also preach your cause.
That’s why you need a point of view to niche down. No new story. No new
category.

It’s the dynamic that enables Spanx to charge something like $22 for a pair of
its washable, reusable shapeshifting pantyhose compared with the $6 or $7
that you’d pay for the alternative in a local pharmacy or department store.
They changed the perception of the problem with their POV and that opened
the category up to consider a much higher-value solution.

Why the hell would a woman pay that difference? It’s pretty simple. The
Spanx version makes the clothes you’re wearing fit better — it does away
with the scourge of VPL (visible panty lines), SC (static cling) and TB
(tummy bulges). Wear them three times (because they’ll actually last that
long without running), and you’ve covered the cost of the cheaper alternative
without compromising on the value.

Don’t believe it? Then you don’t believe in the Spanx POV. And you’re not a
Spanx customer.

Being differentiated is more about who you are not for, than who you are for.

In the case of the random prices we set for our 5-Hour Energy drink example,
there are several simple differentiations in play that could justify the value:
The drink doesn’t taste like coffee or tea (“different” than the traditional,
morning breakfast beverage), and it isn’t loaded with sugar or carbonation
(“different” than the sodas people typically imbibe for a caffeine jolt). If you
buy into those arguments, then it’s the right alternative for you. “Value is in
the eye of the beholder,” Mohammed says.
Category design is the practice of teaching the “beholders” you care about to
value your offering the way you do.

The process of establishing value is similar in the world of services,

especially if you personally fill a niche no one else can fill.

Our friend, Eddie Yoon, freely admits that he used his institutional
knowledge of big-company consulting fees to develop his own model. “The
challenge you may have, which may surprise you, is that you have too much
demand,” he observed during our interview for this book. “Make sure you’re
selective about who you take on or don’t take on.”

You might also choose a different way to sell your expertise at scale — by
using the rich array of technologies that are emerging to enable this, like
podcasts, video-streaming platforms and newsletter-distribution services. It’s
not exactly one-on-one, but these mediums all have a way of making the
audience feel like they have a personal relationship with the host.

You can think of it as a high-tech version of the business world circa 1870,
when pharmacists personally mixed up the prescription to treat your ailments
and all of your clothing was bespoke, sewn by local seamstress and tailors.
The phrase “off the shelf” actually didn’t factor in the contemporary lexicon
until almost 70 years later, coined in the era of mass production that followed
World War II.

“These technologies will take you back to a time when you actually knew
your customers and tailored things to their exact needs,” argues Kevin
Maney, co-author of Christopher’s first book Play Bigger. Kevin’s latest title
is Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts are Creating the
New Economy of the Future. He spoke with Christopher about the central
thesis — how artificial intelligence can help startups forge tighter customer
relationships on a Legends & Losers podcast episode51 that aired in March
2018.
An example of this concept in practice is Stratechery, a media and consulting
newsletter that offers ongoing analysis of technology giants like Apple,
Facebook, Google and Microsoft. Created by former marketing and strategy
executive Ben Thompson, his site publishes a weekly analysis that you can
read for free and three daily updates every week that only subscribers receive.
Ben also co-hosts a weekly podcast called Exponent with Harvard Business
Review writer James Allworthy.

As both of your co-authors can attest, there are plenty of sites hawking tech
news. Stratechery isn’t trying to beat them for clicks or scoops. It lets the
classic media sites beat themselves senseless trying to play that game.

Rather, Ben appeals to industry insiders trying to figure out how to apply
twists and turns to their own jobs. After all, he’s “one of them” at heart.

Today, his newsletter is a Silicon Valley must-read52 in certain executive and

investor circles. Ben amassed more than 2,000 subscribers within two years
of his launch in 2013 — at $100 per year, that’s nothing to sneeze at for what
amounts to a one-person blogging organization.

As subscriber Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud software company Box, gushes in

one of the site’s testimonials: “Ben Thompson’s depth of thinking and
analysis around technology trends and market disruption is pretty much
unparalleled. The ratio of ‘Wow, that’s an interesting way to think about it’
reactions to dollars spent on the Stratechery subscription is off the charts.”

Ben doesn’t reveal exactly how many subscribers he reaches, but his model
allows him to live and work on his own terms in Taipei, Taiwan — taking on
only the consulting projects he wants.

“The Internet enables niche in a massively powerful way, where you can
focus and be really good at one thing,” he said during tech-media publisher
Recode’s annual conference53 in February 2017. “And because you’re not
constrained to a geographic area, you can reach the entire world. I have
subscribers in 30 countries.”

Stepping outside the weird, wonderful world of high tech, it’s not difficult to
see how newsletter systems, artificial intelligence, video platforms and the
like could help other niche-minded youpreneurs share their expertise with a
much larger audience than they could ever imagine touching even just five
years ago. This is setting the stage for a boom in niched-down services.

“What this system is going to allow to happen is that you’re now able to find
enough people for your individual quirky thing to make it a worthwhile
endeavor for you because the data and the system is finding the individuals
that are out there that want what you have and essentially connecting you to
them,” Maney observes.

Want to learn about more entrepreneurs who are already taking that idea to
heart? Turn the page for the final chapter of Niche Down!

40 The New Yorker, “How BlackBerry Fell,” Aug. 12, 2013.

41 “Apple celebrates 1 billion iPhones,” July 27, 2016.
42 The Huffington Post, “Justin Esch And Dave Lefkow, J&D’s Foods: “You Put Bacon Where?”
March 16, 2012.
43 San Francisco Chronicle, “Jack O’Neill, 89, a surfing legend who endures,” May 27, 2012.
44 YouTube, “Jack O’Neill World Memorial Paddle Out,” July 12, 2017.
45 Legends & Losers, “Branding Icon: From Surf Bum To Business Pirate With Santa Cruz Legend
Rich Novak,” March 1, 2018.
46 The Santa Cruz Sentinel, “NHS celebrates 40 years of skateboarding innovation and the creation of
an industry,” Oct. 20, 2013.
47 “23 New Stem and Outdoor Badges Enrich Girl Scout Programming, Which Data Shows Helps
Girls Excel In Life,” July 25, 2017.
48 Forbes,“How the Founder of GoldieBlox Is Creating The Next Generation Of Women In STEM,”
Oct. 11, 2017.
49 Pew Research Center Internet & Technology research, “Social Media Fact Sheet,” Feb. 5, 2018.
50 New York Times, “Putting a Designer’s Polish on Ikea Products,” Oct. 2, 2017.
51 Legends & Losers, “Kevin Maney And The Power Of Being Unscaled,” March 28, 2018.
52 GigaOM, “Ben Thompson: The one-man blog isn’t dead, it’s better than ever,” Feb. 2, 2015.
53 Recode, “How Ben Thompson built Stratechery into a one-man publishing empire,” Feb. 14, 2017.
 5.
IT TAKES COURAGE TO BE
LEGENDARY
“You have to illuminate that path forward, show people where we are going. [And] show
us how to get there.”
— Bill Walton, legendary NBA Hall of Famer and Emmy Award-winning sportscaster

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the
greatest accomplishment.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, legendary poet and champion of individualism

Good News! A Niche-nado Is Coming!

We’re not exactly in the business of making predictions, but as we write this
final chapter, we’re eagerly comparing notes on where some of tomorrow’s
legendary niches will swirl up or storm through the calm complacence of a
mature, mild-mannered market segment. We see mega categories and whole
industries ready for nichetastic fragmentation! And we’re excited to report
that we see oodles of opportunity for those courageous enough to step
forward.

“I think that with a lot of things where scale isn’t as important and expertise
really, really matters, that’s where [you’ll] see the niche-down opportunities
becoming really prominent,” growth-strategy consultant Eddie Yoon (who
contributed massively to this book!) observed during our discussion for this
book.
We couldn’t agree more.

The sphere of management consulting, which is today a $250 billion industry,

is one landscape we’ll be watching closely for legends-in-the-making. Heck,
the industry is already ripe with examples of niche-down-success stories.

Here’s just one of them: AlixPartners, founded in 1981 when the United
States was floundering through the tail end of a recession. Jay Alix54 foresaw
the niche need for a specialized sort of financial and executive consultant
experienced in guiding companies through restructurings or bankruptcies. So,
he set out to cultivate that skillset and establish a venture dedicated to that
service.

His namesake firm quickly became a highly sought-after ally for tough
turnarounds — it was involved in the high-profile reorganizations of General
Motors55, Enron and Kmart (among others). One of the company’s
innovations was a fee structure tied to the success of the engagement —
something that has now become a common practice across the industry.
Another was AlixPartners’ strategy of embedding a senior manager with
decision-making authority into the organization being turned around or sold
off. The firm became adept at finding value in “failure.” AlixPartners has
become so successful over its almost four decades of existence that every big
consulting firm now offers similar services.

That’s because every successful niche-down attracts imitators.

We’d argue that the consulting field is ripe for even more category violence56
in the months and years ahead, thanks to lower-cost data-visualization
technologies, the rise of cloud-computing services that allow individuals to
share their ideas more freely, and artificial-intelligence software that helps
with gathering an audience.

All of these tools abet individual experts in “unscaling” themselves, as our

friend Kevin Maney calls it. You can “go big” without having to crank up
some massive-support organization or administrative network.

And they are exactly the tools that were instrumental in the rise of the
Stratechery newsletter, which we discussed in Chapter 4. “Modern
technology makes it possible to become a personal enterprise again,”
observes Yoon.

You want to know another industry wide open for niching down? Banking.
Many of the largest players are woefully out of touch with their customer
base — even as they scramble to figure out how to use mobile applications
and digital services to streamline their own expenses. Yes, it’s all about them,
not you.

When was the last time you added up all the fees associated with the banks’
privilege of managing your money? People of all ages are sick of being
nickled and dimed for fees by financial institutions, but millennials are
especially fed up with this practice.

Gallup data57 suggests that only 30% of them are “engaged” with a retail
bank. And they are 2.5 times more likely as their elders to switch allegiances
to an organization that offers more compelling options.

You can also see the niche-down philosophy playing out in real time in the
media business. Yes, the stodgy media business is a perfect place for niches.

Ever heard of The Hallmark Channel?

It is hands-down the queen of “feel-good” programming. Hey, why not run

holiday specials in the middle of July! It was also the only “non-news”
network among the Top-15 networks to realize substantial growth58 during
2016 and 2017 — and not just among the older women who were its original
demographic. Yes, it turns out that even middle-aged guys need a Hallmark
fix.
A very similar sort of nostalgia has powered the rise of “Korean dramas”59
(or K-dramas, for short), a genre of shows that has basically exploded on
streaming-video sites such as Netflix and DramaFever (which specializes in
programming from other cultures). You can think of a K-drama as a hybrid of
a soap opera (because there are plenty of cliffhangers) and a “chick flick”
(because there’s always romance involved). If you don’t speak Korean, you
have to watch the programs with subtitles. But they have become “strangely
addictive”60 in the United States.

It turns out people of every culture like finding their happy place.

Embark On A Journey Of Self-Discovery

The most legendary people make a choice to be legendary. They are not
fooling around. Legendary is not an accident.

NBA basketball legend Bill Walton61 makes this mindset clear, “I wanted to
be great.” When he chatted with Christopher for the first of two Legends &
Losers appearances (so far!), Bill goes on to say, “…don’t be just sitting there
waiting for the ball to fall in your lap. Don’t be sitting there waiting for the
phone to ring, man. You’ve got to have a plan. You’ve got to have structure.
You’ve got to have organization. When you come up against problems,
you’ve got to be able to get through them quickly, and make decisions, and
get going, and play in this great game of life.”

So how do you discover, declare, define and defend your unique niche?

It starts with viewing the landscape of your chosen industry through a

different set of binoculars than everyone else is using.

Legendary designer and educator John Bielenberg suggests “thinking

wrong.62”
You may consult the same maps along your journey, but your route will
travel through untraversed terrain and your destination will be hidden from
others’ views — until you outline the routes for them to follow you there.

In short, you must examine the accepted norms and practices of a given
industry, and then blaze a trail that verges away from the road well traveled.

Here is an overarching question we suggest as the first guidepost for this

journey:

Is the industry you’re seeking to address dominated by companies that

have become complacent?

Most bloated bureaucracies can’t help but move slowly.

They’re designed to optimize process, not creativity.

And they usually don’t concern themselves with nimble, niche competitors
until those rivals have claimed enough scale to be worth noticing. And when
they do notice, they’re just as likely to buy into the niche than try to play by
some upstart’s rules. That’s why Unilever scooped up super-premium ice-
cream maker Ben & Jerry’s, and Clorox offered a sweet deal to honey-
inspired personal-care products maker Burt’s Bees.

The executives at those mammoth, consumer-products companies niched in,

when the original founders of those unique, disruptive ventures niched out.

Another question to serve as a compass is this one:

Is the category you’d like to occupy growing or shrinking?

No judgments here. As the K-dramas example we mentioned earlier in this

chapter illustrates, your potential demographic may be way more diverse than
you realize. And, if a market is contracting, that’s creating a problem for
someone, somewhere, and it could be a signal that new growth lies beyond
the horizon of today’s industry norms.

And don’t overlook the role of innovation. Ask yourself:

How might new technologies, including cloud computing services,

artificial-intelligence software, genetics and genomics advances,
cryptocurrencies and blockchain-transaction technology, self-driving
everything, digital-payment apps, three-dimensional printing and so on,
affect your category?

Every single item on that menu, for example, is behind at least one niche
startup seeking to rewrite the rules in the field of big agriculture.

Take the seemingly ubiquitous hamburger, a staple of the American diet and
the lifeblood of many fast-food restaurants. For all sorts of cultural reasons,
the all-beef burger is under attack. Here’s just one of the problems: health-
conscious consumers are consciously weaning off red meat, and it’s a whole
lot more palatable to ditch the ground stuff than a perfectly grilled steak.
Some pretty tasty, plant-based alternatives from ventures like Beyond Meat,
Memphis Meats and Impossible Burgers think they have the right ingredients
to tempt burger-lovers who are looking for an alternative.

The appetite for their products is growing: giant protein company Tyson
Foods has backed both Beyond Meat and Memphis Meats. As for Impossible
Burgers, it has impossibly broad reach for what amounts to a better veggie
burger (way better, actually). Heather can order one any time she wants at a
30-year-old family grill less than two miles from her house in New Jersey.
That’s pretty good name recognition for a seven-year-old company. Here’s a
tech-enabled niche business that should appeal to any reader who has ever
ordered a pizza for delivery to her home or business, only to have it show up
lukewarm or cold. It’s called Zume Pizza63, which delivers thin-crust pies in
the San Francisco Bay Area. Zume’s niche is quite specific: Cofounders Julia
Collins (a restaurant entrepreneur) and Alex Garden (a former executive at
both Microsoft and Zynga) have cooked up robots that automate, assemble
and cook orders right in the back of the delivery truck as it’s headed out for a
delivery. And, you guessed it, the orders come in via a mobile app.

The only thing the driver really does is create the slices and walk the piping-
hot pizza to the door. “She doesn’t have to think about when to turn the ovens
on [and/or] whether to turn the ovens off,” Collins told NPR. “She doesn’t
have to think about what route to take or [whom] to go to first. All of that is
driven off of our algorithm.”

Without algorithms and robotics, there would be no Zume. Don’t worry. If

you’re not a tech geek, we’re not asking you to become one. But that might
be exactly what you look for in your cofounder.

On your journey of self-discovery, don’t forget to keep both your ears and
eyes open. Use these questions as guideposts.

What do people think about the problem you’d like to address? Is the
problem really a problem? And, what’s more, how do you think people
will view the problem 10 years into the future?

This doesn’t mean you have to invest in formal focus groups, but you should
listen, listen, listen. Remember today’s solutions are tomorrow’s problems.
Think back to when developing the next new mobile app was the “thing” to
do. Now, people are looking for an antidote to their smartphones.

Write down all of your assumptions related to these questions and the
opposite of all those assumptions. Think wrong.

Chances are, your path forward may be guided by the contrarian point of
view, like many of the entrepreneurs we’ve mentioned in earlier chapters. But
we’re not done with the introductions yet. Here’s another maverick for you to
meet before we say goodbye: Annie Morhauser, the founder of Annieglass,
who joined Christopher on Episode 16264 of Legends & Losers.

Her glassware company has prevailed in the Monterey Bay Area of Northern
California since 1983 — overcoming a major financial setback after the
October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which destroyed more than 100,000
pounds of raw materials. One-of-a-kind fine art works by Annie Morhauser
are part of collections at respected institutions like the Smithsonian Art
Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning,
New York.

Did we mention that she has been the category queen of her niche for 35
years now? Annieglass was actually one of the very first entrepreneurs whom
Heather interviewed eons ago for a now-defunct gift-trade publication!

Annie has accomplished something rare: crossing over into the commercial
world while tenaciously retaining her fine-art approach and choosing not to
compromise on production. The 30 full-time employees that staff her 15,000-
square-foot glassmaking studio in Watsonville, California, handcraft more
than 100,000 plates, bowls, serving dishes, stemware, flatware and other
items annually. Exquisite objects that also happen to be dishwasher-safe.

Annieglass is a mass producer — by hand — of sculptural glassware.

How’s that for a powerful niche down?!

And that has been a crucial differentiator for the venture for several decades
now.

The main Annieglass facility is located just south of the beach city of Santa
Cruz, California, where the company got its start. It also includes an
“experiential retail” space called the Craftbar where Annieglass holds classes
such as how to make your own glass plate or how to assemble your own
indoor succulent garden.
Sure, the operation could probably produce a lot more items if it hired
glassmaking facilities in a foreign locale to replicate its designs — and plenty
of knock-off competitors do just that every time Annie comes out with a new
collection. But Annie deliberately decided not to travel that path. “I made the
choice not to go overseas,” she told Christopher. “There is tremendous
pressure to do that, and I think that is why I am still here. People feel the need
to over-diversify.”

Let that ring in your head. “People feel the need to over-diversify.”

Part of this was a lifestyle decision: when Annie was originally

contemplating an opportunity to scale production, she was a young mother
and didn’t want to be forced to spend days or weeks away from her children.
The approach also allowed Annie to continue refining her own unique
interpretation of an “ancient” style of glassmaking: Her company’s signature
method of creating pieces is slumping, with glass sheets heated, and then
forced into molds to be reshaped as they cool. Annieglass also blasts glass
with garnets and sand to etch textures and designs onto the surface, and team
also uses water jets to cut pieces. “I have deadlines for myself every six
months,” Annie says.

She welcomes visiting artists who specialize in other mediums — and who
aren’t glass “nerds” — to help her dream up new ideas. An example of one of
the company’s contemporary innovations is Elements, a line of thick trivets
and appetizer trays made entirely out of recycled, glass scraps. “For every
piece that we make, there is [are] a dozen more that we can’t figure out,” she
admits.

Annie’s advice for niching down: “Know your truth north. Know your
limitations.”

The Struggle Is Real

People often have a hard time starting something new. They get stuck on the
“how” as soon as their idea for the “what” becomes clear.

Fuck it.

Don’t worry about not knowing how.

We’ll let you in on a secret: Jordan Harbinger, the former lawyer who
pioneered podcasting before it was a “thing,” began his social interaction
(aka, dating advice) program “Art of Charm” on a whim in his spare time. He
didn’t have radio production experience.

Jordan didn’t have much competition for ear time: 11 years ago, there were
only 800 or so podcast shows vying for attention; there are now more than
500,000. So he had plenty of room to experiment, and the uniqueness of his
hosting style was what resonated with those who were listening. That became
his differentiator. So, he ditched his day job in the legal profession to
dedicate himself to defining the self-help category.

Today, “Art of Charm” is widely recognized as one of the first podcasts to

build a mass audience; it reached four-million downloads a month at its
height. When Jordan moved on to his own show in early 2018 (a cautionary
tale for another time and place), he had been a Top-50 podcast host on the
Apple iTunes store for more than a decade.

You could argue that Jordan stumbled into his niche down somewhat
accidentally. We don’t necessarily disagree with that.

First, he was smart enough to know category potential when he saw it.
Second, his program was unique. Rather than approaching interviews like a
traditional radio host would, with a long script of prepared questions, Jordan
cast himself in the role of audience advocate. He doesn’t try to be friends
with the guest. And he does this deliberately.
“When I have a conversation with a guest, the audience is not there,” Jordan
told Christopher when he appeared on Legends & Losers (Episode 13565).
“So I have to think about what questions they would like to hear, what they
would want to ask, the answers they would like to hear. I also have to protect
their time, so if the guest is going off on a tangent, or being really self-
serving, I have to interrupt them and steer the conversation in another
direction. If I find there’s a topic that’s less interesting for the audience, even
if I’m personally interested in it, I will often steer away from that because I
realize that every minute of the audience’s time is earned. Every minute that
goes by where I am not earning their attention, I am burning what you might
call social capital. I’m burning trust.”

Jordan’s shows might be unorthodox, but they’re accessible, and that’s what
matters.

Within a month of debuting in early 2018, his new show — dubbed “The
Jordan Harbinger Show” generated one-million downloads. When it comes to
hosting, Jordan’s style is the one many newbies and wannabes try to emulate.
But it took him years to find that voice. “It’s great to be unique, but it’s really
damn hard,” he told Christopher.

Every great idea is a horrible failure right before it becomes a massive

success.

Category designers often start out as struggling pirates, dreamers or

innovators. But as we’ve shown in the previous chapters, the rule applies
equally well to individual careers, solopreneurs and startups of all shapes and
sizes.

Those who design their own category can achieve a different kind of deep-
rooted life satisfaction knowing they brought something new to the world. It
comes down to the strength of your convictions.
It takes courage to step out and say, “Here’s all those other people and
what they do. And here’s what I do and why I’m different.”

It takes courage to believe in a provocative, non-conformist point of view

about a problem and why it matters.

It takes courage in your ability to prosecute your own magic triangle.

That courage inspires confidence that you can get the job done.

And, of course, you have to actually have to condition yourself to be great at

what you do.

There’s an interesting human psychology at play here.

If you dig into some brain research, one thing that shows up very clearly is
that human beings are pack animals. The reason category queens and kings
exist — that is to say those companies that claim the vast majority of the
value in a given market — is because human beings don’t like choice.

When human beings do things en masse, they feel safe.

So, every Joe’s Pizza customer makes everybody thinking about pizza feel
good about Joe’s. Ever walked up to restaurant expecting to give it a try only
to walk away because it was empty? Or the opposite, have you ever waited
35 minutes in line to get a lobster roll? We linger because the existence of the
line makes us feel great about the restaurant.

The biggest challenge to personal category design is usually not the

philosophies or concepts behind a given point of view. It’s the fact that
category design actually requires going against that pack mentality.
Humans have a primordial need to feel safe in numbers. We get a lot of
positive feedback from being the same as others.

Our challenge to you is to break from the pack.

Free the creative part, the innovative par, the legendary part of you —
and let that part be different.

Our dream is that you harness the exponential power of what makes you
different versus the incrementalism of just being better.

Because it is being different that makes a difference.

And we know how tough that can be.

“Kermit The Frog” famously sang: “It’s not easy being green.”

Bill Walton commiserates: “In life, things go wrong. In life, things

collapse…. People try to drag you down and people try to say ‘No’ to you.”

He goes on to posit, “I want to live in a world of ‘Yes’.”

Of course, there will be a lot of “losery” along the way.

To be legendary is to be ready for setbacks, disappointments and failures.

Because shit happens. Sometimes, life can be crushing. We’ve both been
crushed more times than we can count.

It’s okay to be a loser.

We all are.

Failure is our teacher. Failure is our friend. Failure is our coach.

Failure gives us humility. Failure gives us grit. Failure gives us a foundation.

Losing is an essential ingredient for being legendary.

Every time we lose we have a choice.

Give up.
Or, take the loss head on, learn from it and execute like a badass legend next
time you’re on the playing field of life or business.

Best wishes for great success, a shit-ton of happiness and massive tax bills!

Be legendary!

54 BusinessWeek, “When the Going Gets Tough, Turnaround Specialist Jay Alix Gets Busy,” Sept. 23,
2002.
55 Forbes, “How General Motors Was Really Saved: The Untold True Story of the Most Important
Bankruptcy in U.S. History,” Nov. 18, 2013.
56 Inc., “The Business Consulting Industry Is Booming, and It’s About to Be Disrupted,” Sept. 11,
2017.
57 Gallup, “4 Ways Banks Can Win and Keep Millennial Customers,” April 3, 2018.
58 The Washington Post, “The feel-good Hallmark Channel is booming in the age of Trump,” Aug. 21,
2017.
59 Mashable, “The nostalgic power of Korean dramas — and why you should start binge-watching
them right now,” May 19, 2018.
60 The New York Times, “The Addictive Charms of South Korean Dramas,” Sept. 15, 2017.
61 Legends & Losers, “NBA Legend And Grateful Dead Hall Of Famer Bill Walton On Living In A
World Of Yes,” Feb. 21, 2018.
62 Legends & Losers, “John Bielenberg Thinking Wrong,” May 28, 2018.
63 NPR, “Our Robot Overlords Are Now Cooking Pizza And Delivering It On the Go,” Sept. 26, 2016.
64 Legends & Losers, “Annieglass Artisan Glassware Category Queen,” June 1, 2018.
65 Legends & Losers, “Betting Big On Yourself After A Business Breakup,” March 23, 2018.
 Share Your Legendary Story

Are you a legend or a legend in the making? Are you niching down? Were
you inspired by this book? Bursting to talk about our and your ideas? Have
perspective you’d like to add to the conversation?

Visit us at legendsandlosers.com. Email us

blackhole@legendsandlosers.com.

Or find us on twitter: Heather is https://twitter.com/greentechlady and

Christopher is https://twitter.com/lochhead.

We’d love to hear your stories, your questions, your advice, your feedback!

And we’d love your review on Amazon.com.

 Meet Legends & Losers

Launched in 2017, Legends & Losers is the show for people who want to
design a legendary life and a legendary business. You’ll experience raw and
meaningful dialogues with innovators, entrepreneurs, marketers, athletes,
investors, terrorist negotiators and Superior Court judges — talking about
wins, failures and the road in between. We dissect legendary and loser
companies and un-pack the root cause of their success and demise, peppered
in with lively rants, epic diversions, and a ton of fun. This show will spark
your spirit, stoke your perseverance, make you love your failures, and forge
your inner legend. Many of the larger-than-life people mentioned in Niche
Down have been guests on the podcast. Episodes referenced in this book can
be found below. To subscribe, visit this link.

1: Getting In The Game & Achieving Ferocious Happiness with Dushka

Zapata (Feb. 21, 2017)

7: How Tim Rhode Became a Category King And Started Two Life-
Changing Organizations (Feb. 28, 2017)

71: One CEO’s Journey From The Dark Side To Killing It, With Sheryl
O’Loughlin (Clif Bar, Plum Organics & Rebbl) (Sept. 7, 2017)

91: Hal Elrod on Overcoming Cancer, the 5-Minute Rule & Achieving Level
10 Success (Nov. 9, 2017)
96: Dushka Zapata On Happiness and Comfort (Nov. 23, 2017)

108: Creating A New Category Of Extreme Athlete With John Devore,

Professional Skydiver & Captain Of The Red Bull Air Force (Dec. 28,
 2017)

126: NBA Legend And Grateful Dead Hall Of Famer Bill Walton On Living
In A World Of Yes (Feb. 21, 2018)

129: Branding Icon: From Surf Bum To Business Pirate With Santa Cruz
Legend Rich Novak (March 1, 2018)

135: Jordan Harbinger: Betting Big On Yourself After A Business Breakup

(March 23, 2018)
136: Kevin Maney And The Power Of Being Unscaled (March 28, 2018)
155: John’s Crazy Socks (May 21, 2018)
159: John Bielenberg Thinking Wrong (May 28, 2018)

162: Annieglass Artisan Glassware Category Queen (June 1, 2018)

168: Tom Szaky – Garbage Innovation (June 22, 2018)
 Thank You For Letting Us Be Us

This book is a work of heart.

It was born rather spontaneously in the winter of 2017 and came together
both more quickly and more slowly than originally imagined. We know that
sounds contradictory, but often our ideas in our brains raced far ahead of our
fingers’ ability to give them shape with words. At times, because of our “real
lives,” we couldn’t work fast enough.

During this process, we discovered just how much we love working together!
As we declared in the introduction, on paper this is a rather odd collaboration.

In the real world, we worked together far more seamlessly than we had
hoped. Heather can now finish Christopher’s sentences, which is a
frightening and validating thing at the same time. (Her profane vocabulary
has grown exponentially.)

Revisions bounced back and forth within a matter of days, actually

sometimes in a matter of hours. Christopher sometimes took a long time
reading a new section draft from Heather, because he would read a line and
yell out, “Fuck yeah, Heather!” then read the next line, yell out again, “Fuck
yeah, Heather!” and so on.

While we didn’t establish quotas, one of our mutual goals was to make sure
that the best category queens and kings were represented within the narrative.

The reality is that female entrepreneurs have their stories told far less often
than their male peers. Having both a female and male perspective was
invaluable.
Many of the most vivid illustrations of the Niche-Down philosophy declared
themselves during episodes of Christopher’s Legends & Losers podcast. We
can’t tell you how many times we returned to chapters that were already
“finished” to add “just one more thing” from an especially insightful or
inspiring guest, often before the material was released to the world at large.

We are particularly grateful for our conversations with basketball legend Bill
Walton for his unrelenting enthusiasm, joy for life and inspiration, and with
best-selling motivational speaker and author Hal Elrod for being so legendary
(and for writing our foreword!).

Our sincere gratitude to the individuals who lent us time for dialogues to test
out and flesh out our theories, especially TerraCycle founder and CEO Tom
Szaky, consumer-insights expert and category maven Eddie Yoon, and
pricing strategist Rafi Mohammed.

In a very real way, Niche Down was inspired by Christopher’s friend Jason
Maynard, senior vice president of marketing and strategy of Oracle/NetSuite.
In 2017, Jason and the marketing leaders of NetSuite asked him to join them
on an executive road tour, hitting places like San Diego, Denver, Toronto,
San Francisco and New York. As they traveled North America, it became
clear that “small e entrepreneurs” had a lot of ideas, thoughts, and questions
about category design.

Somewhere along the way Jason said, “You need to write a book for
entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley.” So, the book you’re reading is a
direct result of Jason’s passion for founders, entrepreneurs and business
owners. Thank you for the inspiration for Niche Down, Jason.

Speaking of inspiration, thanks to Ray (aka R) Wang, founder of

Constellation Research, and Vala Afshar, chief digital evangelist at
Salesforce. Your support of both of us, through social media love and your
frequent inclusion of us as guests on your weekly DisrupTV program, is
humbling and so gratefully appreciated. Heather is especially thrilled to be in
your hall of fame.

And a huge thank you to our amazing book coach, Ellen Violette. Without
her patience and persistence, none of this would have been at all possible —
especially in the relatively modest time we allotted to pull off this project.
Also a shout out to her editing assistant, Jillian Coleman Wheeler, for help
making sure all of our there’s are where they need to be and the T’s never got
us cross eyed.

From Christopher:

Thank you to my beloved family and friends for encouraging and supporting
Heather and me on what is my second book project in less than five years:
my fierce wife, Kari Lochhead; my mum, Jackie; my father Bruce; and my
sister, Carolyn. Love you Martin, Emma, Victoria and Madeleine Cottreau.

Thank you, Heather Clancy. Collaborating with you is a life thrill. Your
brilliance, humor and ass-kick-a-tude are amazing. Whatever recognition this
book might receive will be because of you. Without your ideas, insights,
experience and writing superpowers, none of this would have happened.
You’re a Mack truck of legendary, and I love you. Thank you, Joe Collins,
for being a true one-of-a-kind character and for supporting Heather and me at
every step of the way.

To Candice Lipps (aka “Dandy Candy”) for being my friend, partner and
support system. For putting up with my dysfucklia, bad behavior and general
stupidity, while still loving me. You mean the world to me, and I love you.
Thank you, Jeremy Lipps, for your humor, humanity and friendship. And, for
giving Candice the greatest name ever.

To Colin Vincent, thank you brother. Legends & Losers never would have
gotten started without you. Our friendship, all of the great times we’ve had on
mountains and waves, watching fights, drinking whiskey mean the world to
me. FYJ, KFC!!!!!!!!!

Thank you to Matthew Richard Johnson, for your friendship and for
producing the first 150 or so episodes of Legends & Losers. I literally could
not have done it without you. You and your team were instrumental in
helping tease out some of the original Niche Down concepts in our “Niche
You” teaser. Thanks for helping us give voice to these ideas.

To Jaime Jay and Sara Parrish, thank you for producing, writing, publishing,
website-ing, marketing and everything you do behind the scenes to make
Legends & Losers what it is. You two, too, are legendary.

Thank you, Nick Kullin; you’re a genius and working together on “6 Minutes
of Legendary” has been a magical mystery tour of awesome!

Jim Goetz, thank you for your partnership.

To Shaku and Tushar Atre, love you both.

Thanks to Jon Berghoff and Scot Lowery of Flourishing Leadership Institute

for your unwavering support. Thank you to Bix and Joe Bickson for your
love. To podcaster and author Jon Vroman for showing us the way. Thank
you, Matt Aitchinson, of the Millionaire Mindcast, you’re a stud.

To Dushka Zapata, thank you for everything you write and everything you
are.

Thank you to Ann Miro Ko, Mike Maples, Jr., and Julie Allegro for including
me in your lives.

To the legendary podcaster, Jordan Harbinger, for his wisdom, insights and
friendship; and Kevin Miller, host of The Ziglar Podcast, for your passion for
category design and helping me share my voice.
Thank you, Matt and Stephanie Hanson, Alissa and Mike Bloch, Kim and
Chris Hass, Denise and Rick White, T.J. and Connie Welch, Ben Rewis and
Melanie Gideon, Susan Marfise and Phil Collyer, Kristine Rose, Ben and
Lorinda Kottke. You guys couldn’t be better friends.

To Jean and Phil Cosentino, thank you for your example and love. Mary,
Michael Finn, Fox and Quinnlan Forman, Janine and David Bertelsen, Jason,
Holly, Melissa and Joey Zappala, you’re an amazing family.

Tom and Karen Schwab, and Dan Moyle, thank you for your coaching and
support.

Nellie, Kathleen, Anthony and David Acer, I love you.

Jonathan, Cherilyn, Timmy and Scotty Dyer, thank you for being a gift in my
life.

Randy Womack and Melissa Swisher for your friendship and partnership.

RIP Mark Labow.

Thank you to everyone who loves me. Most days I feel like the luckiest guy
on earth. In no particular order I’d also like to thank: Mike Eyre, Ryan and
Amy O’Donovan, and Colby Barr, Ann Miro Ko, Bruce Cleveland, Peggy
Burke and Dennis Boyle, Duncan Davidson, Paul Martino, Karin Hibma,
Doug and Christine Merritt, Norm Francis, Chris Peacock, Greg Malpass,
Paul Holland, Ann Morhauser, Dr. Darold Treffert, Sarah Churchill, Doug
and Denise McCullagh, Janet Matsuda, Deb Wolf, Lena and Keith Teboul,
Mark Allen, Dr Tina Seelig, Jeff Denholm, The real “Chris Lochhead” in
Ontario, Canada, Dr. Giora Yaron, Mark Wayland, Jordan French, Richard
Bronson, Rock Thomas, Jen Groover, Kevin Maney, Rich Novak, Doug
Haut, John and Mark Cronin, and Linda Campione, Suzy Strutner, Kendall
Dee Fisher, Ranga Bodla, Jennifer Smith, Kyli Singh and Laine Soble, Ever
Gonzalez, Dr. James Kelley, Moe Abdou, John Lee Dumas, Brian Ascher
and Bryan Roberts, Darryl Dickens, Paul Maher, Elie Kanaan, Sue
Barsamian, Mike and Linda Damphousse, Peter Goldie, and Scott Broady,
Pat Grady, Matt Miller, Blair Shane, Jess Lee and Doug Leone, Erik
Weihenmayer, Jon Devore, Adam West (Batman!), Van Halen, Robert Earl
Keen, Lyle Lovett, Leonard Cohen, The Ramones, Spinal Tap, The Big
Lebowski and The Church of the Latter Day Dude, The Tragically Hip, and
of course, Tom Waits.

From Heather:

Thank you to my husband, Joe Collins, for allowing this book project to
infringe on our weekend rendezvous and to steal time from my usual spring-
weekend tasks, like taming the perennials. You were uncharacteristically
restrained about your grumbling for more Heather time.

Writing a book has never been a life goal, and I am grateful to my awesome,
larger-than-life co-author Christopher for turning it into one and for pushing
me totally out of my comfort zone — so far out that I think I have
substantially expanded the boundaries! I would have never taken on this
assignment without your peripatetic coaxing, and I appreciate your unfettered
faith in me. Thanks for the many chuckles and for teaching me how to accept
a compliment. I love looking at the world through your fresh and fuckslexic
eyes. (When can I do it again?)

Thanks to my parents, Beth and Bill Richardson, and Gerald Clancy, for
teaching me the sort of discipline needed to take on a project like this, but for
also valuing creativity and nurturing my inner writer from a very, very, very
early age. To my brothers, Stephen and Colin, for making me a proud big
sister and for bestowing me with the title, “Auntie Heather.”

Thanks to the Green Ladies for putting up with my grumpiness (and

absences) over the six months it took to bring Niche Down to life, especially
my newfound-ish kindred spirit, Janet Ross, whose encouragement kept me
going through many a dark writing session. I am so blessed that you are in
my life, and I appreciate your feedback along the way. (I feel Wayne smiling
down on you every time we are together!) Thanks also to Tamra Coleman,
whose heart is larger than her smile— and that is saying a lot! You have no
idea how hugely encouraging your positive world view is to everyone you
touch. Well, maybe you do, but that’s not why you live that way.

To my sisters in HeartStrings Quartet (Trish Martini, Carole Harrison and

Elizabeth Harris), thank you for allowing my writer’s block to frequently
interrupt our rehearsals. Singing with the three of you enriches my soul in
ways that I cannot express, except through our music.

To the world’s best-ever team at GreenBiz, a huge thank you for giving me
the space on weekends and evenings to complete this “side project” amid so
much change for our organization. So many of the examples validate our
world view that clean energy and the entire field of corporate sustainability
are wide open for entrepreneurs who realize that saving the planet and
making a profit are not mutually exclusive strategies. What a wonderful
niche!

Finally, thanks to all the niche-minded entrepreneurs who have captured our
imagination since our childhoods and who literally inspired this book in the
first place. Whether you’re a legend or a legend-in-the-making, we’re
incredibly privileged to share your world view.
 About The Authors

Christopher Lochhead

The Marketing Journal calls Christopher Lochhead “one of the best minds in
marketing.” Fast Company calls him a “human exclamation point.” NBA
legend Bill Walton says he’s “a quasar.”

And The Economist calls him “off-putting to some.”

Lochhead hosts the acclaimed “dialogue podcast” “Legends & Losers,”

producer of the “6 Minutes of Legendary” podcast and is co-author with
Heather Clancy of Niche Down: How to Become Legendary by Being
Different and the Harper Collins “instant classic”: Play Bigger: How Pirates,
Dreamers and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets.

A former three-time, Silicon Valley public company CMO (Mercury

Interactive, Scient and Vantive), he’s been called a “godfather of category
design.”

Christopher is living happily ever after in Santa Cruz, California, with a

wonderful woman, six hens and two wild cats. He can often be found surfing,
drinking whiskey or having a very good time.

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is an award-winning journalist specializing in transformative

technology and innovation. Her articles have appeared in Entrepreneur,
Fortune, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times.
She was the launch editor for the Fortune Data Sheet, the magazine’s
newsletter dedicated to the business of technology.

As editorial director for GreenBiz.com, Heather chronicles the role of

technology in enabling clean energy, sustainable business strategy and the
low-carbon economy.

When she isn’t writing, you can find Heather digging in her garden in
Northern New Jersey, singing a cappella or scuba diving with her husband.