How Niching Down will Make you More Money | The Power of Differentiation by Chris Lochhead

If you want followers, it's simple. Get on TikTok and twerk. It's— this is not like— if you really want followers, go do porn. Porn gets followers. There's a very simple— look, there's a reason they put gals in skimpy outfits in Budweiser ads. There's a very simple fork in the road that every creator and entrepreneur has to deal with, whether they realize it or not, which is, do I want to make a giant difference? Or do I want to be famous?

We actually, we met a few years ago through Jordan Harbinger. I think it was like 4 years ago. And I think at that point you were thinking about getting sponsors for your podcast and all of these different things. Do you want to sort of quickly recap the conversation from your side and what you came out of it with?

Yeah, I mean, at the time I had started to have my first sort of success in podcasting. I mean, we started off reasonably well, and then it sort of built and built. And like a lot of things, you have these breakthrough plateaus or these breakthroughs that get you to a new plateau. And of course, Jordan Harbinger being one of the legendary podcasters, a great guy and great pioneer in our category and industry. Big brain, big heart. And so I said to him, hey, I'm thinking about trying to figure out how to— my podcast had grown primarily organically. And I'm thinking about how to market it and maybe try to take it to an even bigger level and then maybe even think about monetization. And so he connected me to you, and you made a difference for me in a way that you might not have expected to, which is we started to have this conversation around monetization. And the more we talked about how to monetize a podcast, as I reflected on it after the conversation, Sachit, I thought to myself, well, I can monetize a podcast, but if I really want to monetize, what there is to do is monetize a 35-year career in helping companies design and dominate market caps, market categories such that they produce billion, multibillion-dollar market caps. And so I sort of, I gave my head a shake. I was sort of in this sort of stupid podcast creator world trying to follow some path. And I sort of had this aha that said, hey, wait a minute, dude. This was actually never about money. And if I want to make money, I know how to go do that. And I can make a lot more money advising 2 or 3 legendary startups on how they win the category battle, go public, and create multibillion-dollar market caps that are enduring and make a difference doing that than trying to figure out how to get ZipRecruiter to pay me $20,000 a month or some fucking thing. So you sort of set my head straight in that the emphasis was on the wrong syllable, that if I wanted to make money, I knew how to go make money in a way that was much more exponential than being essentially an ad salesperson. And the real gift you gave me around podcasting, Sachit, and creating in general, writing and podcasting, because of course I do both, is, hey, dude, You're not doing this to monetize, and so don't focus there. And so today on my podcast, every ad read that you hear is from a company that I'm involved with and/or a company that is created by friends of mine.

Mm-hmm.

And even though there were points in time where we did take sponsored dollars, we had, if you will, more legit sponsors in that sense. Once those agreements ran out, I decided that You know, maybe never say never, but for the most part, I was going to say no when sponsor requests came in because, you know what, I don't need to monetize. And if I'm lucky enough to have an audience that is into our work and some of the thinking, then what I really want to do is actually help companies that are created by people that I respect and admire and help those companies grow rather than collect advertising and all that stuff. So, I mean, never say never, but we get asked all the time and we just politely say we're not taking on any new sponsors.

I think the story you shared is so important because I think the thing that I was trying to show you there was you don't have to monetize directly. You can monetize indirectly, right? And I think, let me just pull this up here. This is why this book, Snow Leopard, is so important because Here's what I see happening in this creator world right now. There's a stat that I think like 75% of creators or youngsters want to be YouTubers. And the path most of them see in front of them is go on YouTube or something else, create content that's for the extremes because that's what spreads. And then once you chase views and get to a certain level of audience, you can monetize in some way, right? And if you don't become big, can't monetize. And we've all seen how the thing that actually really spreads is stuff at the extreme or stuff in your book you call the obvious content, which is not really the stuff that's useful. So I would love for you to actually start by framing the content matrix. And I don't even remember what the bottom ones are called. I just remember them as you saying how everyone's being made to create drivel, right? So if a creator is coming up and they have Let's just say something that's obvious or non-obvious that they're good at. The first thing they start doing is, oh, I have to do these short clips or whatever. I have to just basically create this popcorn-style McDonald's french fries for everyone in the world to see, post like 5 times a day, and all of those things. That's what they're being told.

Yes, and it's caused radical damage. Gary Vee and all these other people saying, oh, you got to put out 200 pieces of content a day on every platform. Well, Dan Carlin has the number one history podcast in the world, to the best of my knowledge. And if I'm not mistaken, Dan puts out one or maybe 2 episodes a year. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that some volume doesn't help. It does. And we all know consistency matters. There's a reason that My podcasts drop. One drops on Monday and one drops on Wednesday pretty much every week. And so there's some value to that. I'm not discounting the value of consistency and the value of some volume. But here's the thing we've been duped at. Everybody talks about content marketing. Everybody talks about using content on social. Here's what they don't talk about: content about what? And so, if you start to look at it, because of all these influencers and hustle porn stars, we have been duped into thinking that more volume, more better, and that everything's content. And you get this stupidity where people are talking into their phones going, "Hey everybody, it's me. I'm having a burrito. It's hump day Wednesday. Go for it. You can do it." And that's a meaningful thing.

And when you talk about the consistency part too, it's like, yes, and the reason you mentioned that, that the sort of unsaid was the reason you're consistent is because that's what these algorithms expect. And if you're not, your ranking will drop or your reach will drop and all these things. And then as I think a byproduct of it that actually hurts creators, you get the sort of Twitter thread voice, which I call it now, which is XYZ, 99% of the world don't know this. Here are 5 ways. It's like the same thing and it is the most obvious stuff that I think, if you look at where AI is going in the next 5 years, that kind of content AI could probably just mass-produce on an exponentially bigger scale than what it is being now.

Yes. Let's break it down. We introduced this this, uh, framework called the Content Pyramid, and it's sort of got the 5 levels of content. The first one is, is consumption. So anybody who goes on the internet is at level 1. You're consuming content, and that's the vast majority of people on the internet. That's the vast majority of people who consume TV, etc., uh, and they stop there. Level 2 is what we call curation. So, and, and there's some very powerful examples of curators who've done amazing things. One you know very well. We highlight Ryan Holiday and of course Tim Ferriss as 2 examples of maybe the greatest digital curators around. And, and that in no way is pejorative. It is absolutely a compliment and it is an incredible thing. In the case of Ryan, nobody was talking about Stoics. Nobody knew who the fuck Marcus Aurelius was. And now you see all that shit all over the place. And I think he's done a great service to an entire generation of people to rediscover some of the greatest thinkers in history. And you're not going to go read that stuff. Ryan knows that, so he reads it for you and he puts it in a modern context that's highly consumable. And he's one of the most successful nonfiction authors of our modern day. And God bless Ryan, he's done a great job. In the case of Tim, you tell me if this is accurate. Tim likes to interview folks who are very smart and very accomplished. He prides himself on being able to synthesize those things that those folks do. He calls himself things like a human experiment and this and that, and he tries all sorts of foods and supplements and all this stuff and ideas. And he does all this stuff to himself, and he tries to synthesize some of these learnings, and he puts them together in a podcast, and he puts them together in books. And he does a wonderful job of letting you know what, from generals to entrepreneurs to athletes and traders and entrepreneurs and everybody in between, and synthesizes that stuff and serves it up to you on a platter that is highly consumable. Is that fair?

Yeah. And just to add to that, like, if you look at his last 2 books, which I was lucky to be part of, like, the marketing plan for it and doing that— Tribe of Mentors and Tools of Titans— they were in essence synthesizing information from other people and basically built like massive books just based on that. And they did well.

And did a great job. Those are great books. And if you want to learn from masters in certain domains, those are great books. And Tim's podcast is a great podcast. And Bob's your uncle. We talked about Jordan. Jordan is very similar in that regard, right? He helps you synthesize some of the learnings of his guests and so forth and so on. He's a very thoughtful guy. He's got a brilliant mind. He's a lawyer, et cetera, et cetera. And so folks like that, for most— and I'm not saying they don't ever contribute their own thinking, but for the most part, what they're doing is synthesizing and curating thinking data and so forth, frameworks from others and presenting them in highly consumable ways. And I think that's awesome. And you can be legendarily successful. I think most creators, if you said, could I have Tim Ferriss's level of success, would be over the moon about that. So that's the second level. The third level we call obvious connection. So obvious content.

Mm-hmm.

And there's a very important role for obvious content. Obvious content is great beginner content. Every for dummies book ever is obvious content. And if you, uh, let's say you were trying, let's say you bought a vintage Mustang and you decided you wanted to, uh, uh, to refurbish the engine yourself cuz you were passionate about this stuff.

Mm-hmm.

Well, and you weren't a professional mechanic. This was kind of just a pleasure, a hobby you were doing. Well, at that moment in your life, you need some radically obvious content, books about Mustang engines and awesome YouTubes. And those of us, when we're considering a purchase, let's say you're thinking about buying a new Mustang versus some other muscle car. Well, we want to go online. We read Car and Driver. There's a whole bunch of incredible creators on YouTube who do these amazing reviews. They're independent folks that are incredible content, and it's radically obvious. They take the Mustang, they take the Corvette, they take them out for a drive, they give you the specs, they put the GoPros in the car, and they tell you all about it. And it's amazing, and it's incredible, and it's it's it's entertaining, and it's highly informative. And that's what you need because you're trying to put together a carburetor, or you're trying to decide should I buy the Mustang or the Corvette or whatever. decision you're trying to make or execution you're trying to accomplish that you need radically obvious content for.

Mm-hmm.

And some wildly successful books are in that domain. In Snow Leopard, as you know, we have a whole chapter on the first category science research project ever done on the top 500 bestselling nonfiction books of the last 20 years. And the reason we know it's the first one ever done is because we licensed the content from Nielsen, and that's what they told us we were doing. Anyway, one of the most successful, what we call obvious obvious, and I'll get to why we say it twice in a sec, books of late is The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. And that book has sold tremendously. And it's obvious obvious.

Would you put Atomic Habits in the same category?

No, and I'll get to that in a second. Atomic Habits is a non-obvious obvious, but we'll get to that in a second. Start a lot harder. Not Giving a Fuck is obvious obvious. You don't need to read the book. Here's the book. You ready? Only pay attention to things that you care about and don't give a fuck about anything else. That's the book, period. It's not even a blog post. The book. The idea. The content is a tweet. That's what it is. However, and again, I don't mean this pejoratively, and I forget the author's name.

Mark Manson.

Mark Manson. Great job, Mark. Congratulations. You did great. You made a success of yourself. And there's some meaningful percentage of the population that needs to be given the permission from a thinker, from an author, to say, you know what, it's okay to only give a fuck about the stuff that matters and to not give a fuck about everything else. And that's a radically obvious insight. That's an insight that most people who thought about life design and how they want to live their life and plan their life figure out very early on. That said, clearly millions of people— he sold millions of that— needed to hear that message. That means it's great that he did. He provided value. And even though the content of his book is effectively a tweet, And it's obvious. Obvious. It made a difference. However, obvious, obvious content, A, has a limited shelf life. Nobody's going to be reading The Subtle Art of Giving a Fuck in 10 years from now, certainly 20 years from now. And nobody will remember Mark. I'm sorry, Mark, but they won't because it's obvious. Obvious. The other thing about obvious, obvious is, in his case, He was the first to say that in a different way, putting a swear word on the COVID of a book.

Well, as a result, there's a million fuck books now with the same orange cover.

Correct. And because Mark wants to, needs to milk that category that he created, the fuck book category, To the best of my knowledge, if not all, the vast majority of things he's written since then have the word fuck in the title. And he's the don't give a fuck guy. He's the category king of don't give a fuck. And if that's what he wanted to be, congratulations, that's what you are. As we go up the pyramid, there's non-obvious connections. So that's an obvious connection.

Duh.

Non-obvious connection. A great example of this is Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm's built a career on non-obvious insights, right? So Tipping Point, one of the best-selling nonfiction books of the last 20 or so years, was in the study. It's in the book. And here's the interesting thing about Tipping Point. The COVID of the book, if you remember, says The Tipping Point. Well, that phrase is non-obvious, right? The first time you and I hear that, we don't know what that means. And I don't have the subtitle in front of me, Sachit, but the subtitle is something like, you know, How Small Ideas Turn into Big Things or something along those lines.

Or Ideas Spread. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. How they spread. And this is a huge unlock for creators. The reason Gladwell is Gladwell— oh, and by the way, one other thing about Gladwell. If you take the masterclass course from Gladwell on how to be Gladwell, it's a legendary course, and it's completely unhelpful on how to be Gladwell, because Gladwell, like most legends, doesn't have any idea how he became Gladwell. Michael Jordan was called the worst basketball executive of all time. So he teaches you some things that are valuable, but he does not teach you how to be Gladwell because he doesn't know. So I'm going to tell you how he became Gladwell. Non-obvious title, obvious subtitle. And we even discovered, Sachit, there's a noise you want people to make. Which is, huh? Ah. So that's the next level, is non-obvious connections. And then the top of the, the content pyramid is you use some combination of curation, Mm-hmm. obvious connections and non-obvious connections to create a category of one. And as we say right at the front, writers without niches are called starving artists, and writers with niches are called category kings. And search and replace writers for creators, and Bob's your uncle. And so now Gladwell has positioned himself as a snow leopard. He's in a category of one because he is a thinker about the human condition. That gets non-obvious connections to land in obvious ways for people, providing them with an unlock of some kind. And this is where the power is for most creators. You can have an obvious with a non-obvious. You could write a book called How to Lose Weight. Radically obvious.

Mm-hmm.

And the book could be about how to use ice packs on your feet and ice baths 3 times a week to lose 20 pounds in 2 months. So in that case, the obvious catches you. Oh, I'm interested in losing weight. Well, here's the problem with obvious. There's a bazillion books on obvious how to lose weight. When you have a non-obvious subtitle, that is to say, a non-obvious way to get to the obvious outcome that feels— I'm going to use these words very much on purpose— radically different. People are like, oh, I could use cold showers and ice baths and ice packs on my feet. And this is like the step-by-step guide on how to use that to lose some weight. Fucking A. That sounds like a cool book. I'm interested in that.

Mm-hmm.

So the unlock— and we did it with data. We got to these insights by studying the top 500 selling business or nonfiction books of the last 20 years and by looking at them through the content pyramid. What's curation? What's obvious connection? What's non-obvious connection? And what creates categories and the combination thereof. So, for example, one of the things that Ryan does that's incredible is he does some curation and he gives you a combination of mostly obvious and some non-obvious extrapolation from the curation. Excellent. And so this is the unlock that if you're going to be radically successful as a creator, You must become known for a category that you own. And the way you get there is you create radically differentiated intellectual capital that is some magical combination of obvious and non-obvious. And if you want to do obvious, obvious, Siddhartha, giving a fuck, you might be successful, but you need to make sure that you're breaking and taking new ground with your radically obvious. Because the reason all the Gary Vee wannabes have no success is because they say all the same dumb shit.

So, 2 points on what you said, and then I want to ask actually a question that's more specific because I think I'm going to put it into action. First point is what you just mentioned about that chapter in your book where you studied the books. If you're an author, I would say get Snow Leopard just to read that chapter because the data that you had in terms of what categories work, and then how it combines with obvious, non-obvious. I was just looking at it this morning. I was like, this is insane level of research that I haven't seen anywhere else.

We were hoping the research existed. And of the 3 of us in Category Pirates, because none of these ideas I'm sharing with you today are mine alone. They're as a result of a collaboration with the legendary Eddie Yoon and Nicholas Cole. And we're not just co-authors, to the best of our knowledge. And if there's others, we want to know about them. But to the best of our knowledge, we are the only business writing band. Sometimes 2 or 3 people come together to write a book. My first book, Play Bigger, was actually written by 4 people. It was an amazing thing. But we were not a band. We wrote one book, so we created one record, and that was it for that team. In the case of Category Pirates, we made a commitment to write together over a very long period of time. We've been together for about 2 years now, and we plan to be together at least until you put me in a box and throw dirt in my face, because these are the guys I want to do that with. So to the best of our knowledge, we're the only business writing band. If there's others out there, we'd like to know. And we have a whole sort of side commitment, if you will, to inspire other bands, because we think creator bands are a very powerful idea. And I could talk about why, if that mattered. So we wanted, as a creator band, as a writing band called Category Pirates, we wanted to understand, okay, well, what makes a hit record and what doesn't and why? Additionally, Sachit, as entrepreneurs and category designers, Studying the bestselling nonfiction books is more than just studying why nonfiction books work or not. It's also studying why some new categories of ideas, some new categories of products and services tip and don't tip. And so nonfiction books are a proxy for why certain ideas succeed and why others don't. So even in a non-writing context, if you care about creating anything, product, service, content, whatever, understanding what works and what doesn't through a category science lens, like, not arm waving and opinion, but based in actual data, is a powerful thing.

And yeah, you have that chapter in there called, I think, or section, How Ideas Kill. So, okay, I'll set the stage, just kind of like what I'm dealing with, and maybe we can do kind of like an exercise. So I guess I would like to believe the work that I do, for example, the conversation that we had, the thing we talked about early on about how I got one client that was worth more than an entire fellowship that I ran and how creators should be charging more. I believe those to be sort of like non-obvious insights for creators, right? Because I think most creators aren't doing that. And if you look at the sort of like, I hate using this word, but the TAM of that idea should really be like the 75% of creators that are now like, or people that want to be creators, right? And so as you know, a lot of my work has been in one-on-one capacities with people and calls and stuff. And I think last year really I made a decision to start talking more about it and start scaling. Obviously the first thing I went to was I bought a few courses about Twitter and started turning podcast stuff into clips and stuff. And very quickly, and I think reading your book, I was like, wait, I'm actually going from someone who's known for non-obvious insights to now creating French fry McDonald's content for the social platforms and algorithm because that's what I'm seeing everyone do, right? So what am I missing and what should I be doing instead to take Again, what I believe is like non-obvious content and stuff that I do with clients and turn it into something that can scale and still reach a wide variety of people without becoming McDonald's.

Legendary question. At a high level, there's a very simple fork in the road that every creator and entrepreneur has to deal with, whether they realize it or not. Which is, do I want to make a giant difference, or do I want to be famous? Now, sometimes those things go together, but we've been trained by the hustle porn stars and the influencers that success is about likes and shares and followers. And yes, If you're The Rock and you have 400 billion followers or whatever the fuck number The Rock has, I've seen— I don't know what you've seen. I've heard that he can command up to $2 million for a post.

Sorry to interrupt. The reason, if you watched the video, I was smiling when you said that is literally last week I set up this table of OKRs for my social team with, let's monitor follower growth and we need more followers.

Continue. Well, and so here's the aha. Do you want everybody to like you and think you're great, or do you want to make a difference? Do you care? Would you rather have 100 people who think what you do is legendary and it makes a radical difference in their life because you share incredible unlocks, or, um, do you want followers? Because if you want followers, it's simple. Get on TikTok and twerk.

Right. It's—

this is not like— if you really want followers, go do porn. Porn gets followers. There's a very simple— look, there's a reason they put gals in skimpy outfits in Budweiser ads, okay? There's a— it's— so if that's what you want, Or the other one is the buffoonery.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so if you take a look at— this is probably going to get me in trouble, but I find a guy like Scott Galloway sad because— and I don't know the guy, he came on my podcast once, but he appears to me to be a guy who is a very thoughtful guy, very smart guy, a committed professor who was trying to make a difference. And so what happens is, and you said it earlier, Being outrageous for the sake of being outrageous will get you followers. Go twerk. You want to get followers? Do a video of yourself lighting the American flag on fire. You'll get attention, et cetera, et cetera. And so here's what happens. Fundamentally, it's the distinction between missionaries and mercenaries. If you're doing this to make up for the fact that you don't think your parents loved you or you didn't get the attention that you wanted at school and to make money and because you want to be famous, go with God. Have at it. In my opinion, you're chasing something very false. And here's the other thing I'll tell you. Being fucking famous sucks nuts. Anybody who thinks they want to be famous has got their head up their ass, because I know some very famous people and they can't go anywhere without security. And while I've never been famous, far from it, I've had what you might call sort of some podcast author notoriety. And on one hand, it's somewhat flattering when you're in line at a coffee shop and somebody turns around and says they recognize recognize your voice. On the other hand, when fucking weirdos show up at your house, not so cool.

Right.

So anyway, this obsession with fame is nuts.

So, and also to answer your question, for me, I want to make a difference, but I think I've reached a point, and I think maybe like 5 years ago I was definitely like, oh, I want fame or whatever. Now I think what I realize is I want to make a difference, but I want to make a difference for a lot of people. And what I mean specifically by that is if that 75% of creators that are coming up, if I can in some way have that conversation that I had with you and stop them from chasing followers and get them to chasing their craft instead, I think it can make a huge difference in the sort of world of creators moving forward. Because I really see that if that doesn't happen, they're all basically going to be sacrificed to the algorithm. Yes.

So let's get to how you do that, how you make a difference at scale. So here's the unlock. With all of the courses and all of the influencer porn and all this stuff, mostly what they talk about is, A, volume of content, and B, how to get your content to scale. Almost none of it talks about what's the fucking content. And so here's the aha. And in category design, one of the core tenets is listen to the words. Listen. Okay. Thought leader. I want to be a thought leader. Thought leader is the next evolution in influencer. I want to be a thought leader. Okay, great. Then if you post on Twitter, Today, just do one more. You are, A, not doing any thinking, and B, you are not leading with your thoughts. So if you want to be a thought leader, you must have leading thoughts.

Mm-hmm.

And so we live in a world where the entire marketing world, where the entire creator world, where the entire entrepreneur world has been duped into saying nothing everywhere. And here's the test. When was the last time you consumed a piece of content from a company— let's take SAP, one of my favorites— and you went, wow, that was legendary content?

I actually remember the answer. I know the answer to that. I want to give them a huge shout-out, this company Levels, which makes this fitness tracker. They've written a lot about how to build companies and team building. It is very different than what everyone says.

That's what I'm talking about.

Right. And the fact that I remembered on this podcast to like, be like, yeah, I want to shout out because, because it was so different than everything else.

So the ultimate question for every creator, marketer, and entrepreneur is, if you read, consumed your content for the first time, would you go, that's legendary content? If you're a creator, when your shit goes out— video, podcast, book, blog post, newsletter, whatever the content is— do you rush to consume it? Are you the biggest fan of your podcast? Because if you're not, it's telling you something. So here's the unlock. The unlock goes like this. You want to be a thought leader, you must have leading thoughts. That's why we get into in the book, and I'm happy to go through it in detail if you like, how to actually think. What I'll say as a start point is thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking. Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking.

I was going to say, let's go into detail because I think for people hearing, as they hear us kind of almost workshop this, People will be able to pick up principles and stuff. So I think let's do that. Okay.

So a while back, we had a legend on Follow Your Different named Roger Martin. And many people consider Roger Martin to be the number one management and business thinker today. And many people consider him the, quote unquote, new Peter Drucker. Regardless of what you consider Roger, hard to argue that he's not a smart guy. And he's written a new book I highly recommend. It's called The New Way to Think, or The New Thing About Thinking. It's got new and think or thinking in it. It's Roger's new book. Google it, you'll find it's unbelievable. So one of the things that he helps us understand, helps us delineate, is kinds of thinking. And here's what Roger says. There's reflexive thinking and reflective thinking. So reflexive is you're driving your car, somebody cuts in front of you, you immediately take action so that you don't hit that person. And in that case, a reflex, just like when the doctor bangs The little thing on your knee and your leg goes whoop. A reflexive think can save your life. Reflexive is somebody says something. Somebody says 99.9% of what we've been taught about marketing and entrepreneurship is wrong. Reflexive thinking goes, hmm. I don't know about that. Maybe I agree, maybe I disagree, but let me think about that and let me see what I really think.

Mm-hmm.

Now, here's the aha. So that's what— that's Roger's teaching. Here's the aha. Today, Sachit, we live in a world where the vast majority of people don't understand any of that. We live in a world where people don't think about thinking, right? And so what most people today call thinking is actually the mental retweeting of shit we already know and like. That is to say, radical obvious.

Right.

And the reason we like it is it creates a virtuous circle of happiness and comfort. So, for example, if I'm a Republican and I'm consuming Republican news and I read about something that President Biden just did, and I go, see that? Fucking Democrats being stupid again. They do stupid shit all day long.

Yep.

And if I'm a Democrat, I do the same thing. And I'm comforted by my ongoing self-referential reflexive thinking.

Mm-hmm.

That's what we do today. Nobody thinks about thinking. Nobody thinks about how are we framing the conversation. Nobody thinks about why do we call things what we call things. In category design, we're students of what we call languaging, the strategic use of language to change thinking. And just the other day, Sachit, I was in an airport and I saw this sign. And it said, pet relief area. And I thought, wow, that's legendary languaging right there. Instead of putting a sign that says, your dog can take a shit here, they say, pet relief area.

They're turning it into something else.

Somebody thought about how to communicate pet bathroom. Okay. And so most of us don't think. Most of us retweet shit we like. Well, if you want to be a creator and you want to have success, you want to be a thought leader, you have to get a black belt in reflexive thinking. You have to learn to say why 5 to 7 times about your own beliefs. And about others. You have to be able to say, common thinking on this topic is X. Let's start at the opposite, the 180 of X, and see what happens. In the old days, we used to teach debate in school. Some of us still do. Interesting thing about debate class that's incredibly powerful is You have 2 teams. You pick a topic, abortion. One is pro-life, one is pro-choice. Fight it out. Then the teacher says, now you got to switch same teams. And I'm sure you've heard this a million times. A mark of your intelligence is your ability to take 2 diametrically opposed ideas, hold them in your head, and continue thinking. My friend Bix Bixen and mentor Bix Bixen says a conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking, right? And when you do that, you get to be Malcolm Gladwell.

So let's do an exercise because I think I would love to kind of like walk you through how I thought about it from reading the book, and then you tell me where I'm doing it right or wrong. And I think For anyone listening, this is going to be something that they're going to just repeat again and again because we're watching a master in action. So you talked about the different kinds of thinking, and that leads to point of view, right? Before I think you go to category. And I was really thinking, I was like, okay, what is my point of view for creators? I think it starts with that thing, which is like most creators chase followers because they think they can get ad deals. My point of view is it doesn't actually matter what your audience size is. With a really small audience of even hundreds of people, which is what I had for the 10 years where no one knew about me. You can, with the right positioning, with the right sort of target, you can get to the right customers and charge a lot of money. So that's the first one. The second sort of POV is I think a lot of times creators actually can't scale because they are doing everything themselves because they don't have any money to pay people. And if you can charge someone and make money and charge them like premium, you can actually use that to build a team around yourself. So you're only doing the stuff that you're doing and you can outsource the rest to other people that are way more competent. Because I think creators are very good at a few things, but not everything, right? And you have a team, you have Candace who manages stuff. And I don't know, even now I've built a team over the last 2 months. I have no idea what I would do without that, right? So that's the second one. Third one is I think creators are really great at creating new things over and over again, but you actually build audience by optimizing what already exists. So instead of creating 50 more pieces of content, take the ones that have already worked and use paid media or different things to get to more people. I think the last part of, and this is something I feel really strongly about in terms of point of view, is you're seeing how there's a lot of companies that are coming up that are creator-friendly, but when they say creator-friendly, they mean as a creator, if you're good at something and you have some sort of audience, you sell them your IP. So then you basically get a job and maybe like a rev share on that, and you become part of that company. And I think creators should, as much as possible, remain independent and not sign over to a label or a book publisher and all of those different things. So those are sort of the points of view that I have. And I think in terms of trying to design a category, what I came up with was I don't think this is it, but this concept of you should become a full-stack creator. We do this through teaching something called the Creator's MBA, which is sort of like trying to combine 2 things, which is creators and MBA, which is business, because I hope it creates that aha thing that you talked about. That's sort of the work through your book, through your books, actually. We've done in terms of trying to figure out how do we design a category on this. Awesome.

So you want me to break down what's happening?

Yes, please. Yes.

So the 2 potential category names I think I heard you say were Full Stack Creator and Creator MBA. Yes. Okay.

I don't even know their category names. They're just like names I'm using to identify stuff.

Yeah, well, that would be the category name, potentially.

Got it.

Because if you're using it to describe— and here's the unlock with category, why it matters. If I say to you, let's say you're in Santa Cruz, I'm glad to welcome you. We're going to go out tonight to one of my favorite restaurants. And I say to you, oh, we're going to go to this amazing restaurant. It's called Gabriella's. What is a logical question you might ask?

What kind of food is it?

What kind of food? Okay. And right there is why category first, brand second. And I would answer to you, Italian. And you might say, oh, I love Italian, but, you know, I had Italian last night and I'm kind of craving sushi. Right? Then I would say, oh, well, we have this amazing sushi restaurant. It's called blah, blah. And so the way the human mind works is category first, brand second. We have to know what it is before we want it from somebody.

Now, and just a quick thing on that is I think what I did there was Creators MBA was the brand, and I did brand first without thinking of the category.

So correct, category makes the brand, right? Yeah. Okay, so let's just take, let's just take one of them, full-stack creator. Well, the term full stack is used in other domains. Yes.

Developers. Developers. That's where I got it from.

Right. So what we're doing there is borrowing thinking, framing, category design, mental scaffolding from an adjacent place.

Right.

And applying it to a new place. That can be a very powerful thing. However, what percentage of creators know what a full-stack developer is?

Very few.

Right. And here's the other one. Whenever I hear this, I have this objection to full-stack, and I have— This has been going on in services businesses for decades. Go to a PR firm's website, go to an ad agency's website, go to a plumber's website, and here's what you'll see.

We do everything.

We are a full-service ad agency. We are a full-service plumber. Those words literally are meaningless.

Right.

And here's why. I've never gone to a PR firm's website and had them say, we are a part-service PR firm. Never, never heard that. So when you say full-stack creator, unless I'm a developer or know developers, I don't have that association with those words. And if you're like me, you go, hmm, I wonder what a half-stack creator is.

I didn't even think of that, but that's true.

It's like, it's like, not, not to be overly sophomoric, but everybody says, you know, we're never— we're not gonna half-ass this. And I always think, well, that we must be full-assing it then, right?

Exactly. It's that Ron Swanson quote of never half-ass anything, full-ass everything, right?

Full-ass everything, right? So I don't know who Ron is, but I agree with him. And so, so it's not helpful, and because it doesn't mean anything in the context of moving the world from one point of view to a new and different point of view.

Right.

Let's go back to Gladwell for a second.

Okay.

Tipping Point. You know what he could have named The Tipping Point? How Word of Mouth Marketing Works. Because that's what The Tipping Point is about. Right. Or how word of mouth works now. And I've done this. I forget the number, but if you go on Amazon right now and type in word of mouth marketing, you're going to see a whole lot of shit, right? He wanted radical differentiation on an idea that actually is not much of a breakthrough idea, with all due respect to Malcolm. What he did was, and I'm going to say these words on purpose, Frame it, name it, and claim it in a new and different way. And as a result, he's not the 437th person to write a book on word of mouth. He's the category king of tipping point. He's a snow leopard.

He's the only one who wrote that book. Correct.

He's the only one. He stands alone. Right. Snow leopards don't flock.

Yep.

It's rare to see one. It's way rarer to see 2. That's why snow leopard. Right?

Right.

And the reason Gladwell is a snow leopard is because he understands intuitively category design. He can't tell you that's what he's doing, but that's what he's doing. And so the question is, let's go back to you and your category design. Let's go back to the Venn diagram of skills that you have that you're putting together in a unique way. So, so I'm going to draw circles as we talk. So we have one circle called monetize, create or monetize, right?

Right. So I would say the circles are how to make money, monetize, how to grow your audience, which is marketing, how to actually build a great product or a great podcast, which I call it like production. And I would actually add one more circle because this is something I started seeing happen a few times, or actually many times. I will do calls with clients and they will come out of it saying like, oh, you're a therapist. So there's a lot of mindset and coaching in that. I don't know what to name it, but—

Let's go with mindset for now.

Yeah, but that's a huge part of what I do without sort of knowing that I'm doing it.

Okay, so there's 4 circles. Am I getting this right?

Right.

And if we were to draw them, I'm going to draw them myself with the overlap in the middle, like the classic sort of Venn diagram. And the 4 circles are monetize, market, product, and mindset. And I can't draw worth a shit, but you end up with something that looks something like that, right? But that's not drawn by a drunken 2-year-old. Okay. So that's what makes you different. Yes.

Right. It's the combinatrix of the 4.

Correct. It's where those 4 things meet. So what the connecting of those 4 things solves a problem.

Yes. Right.

What's that problem?

In the eyes of the creator, right?

No, in the eyes of the consumer, in this case, the creator. Not you as the creator, but the creator as your customer client. Yes.

It's, I think they find a way to make a living from their art that isn't based on chasing more followers. followers, if I were to frame it as a benefit, right? And I think I have to get maybe clear on that. I think in your case, the problem for you was, oh, I have to get all these sponsors and do all of these things. Oh wait, there's an actually easier way to monetize that isn't that. Would you say that's accurate?

Well, even more importantly, yes, that's 100% true. And you got me to realize I had fallen into a stupid trap. Because of all the insanity in this world. And what I realized is this isn't about monetizing for me.

Mm-hmm.

This is about making a contribution. And I'm a fortunate person in that I've had the career that I've had and the degree to which I want to monetize myself going forward. If I'm going to do that, it makes— it's way smarter for me to work with a company and help them design and dominate a category than it is figuring out how to fucking get ZipRecruiter to sponsor my podcast.

Right.

Right. That doing that was a dumb waste of my time compared to, A, doing podcasting for joy, and B, doing work that makes a difference that is lucrative economically for me. So you unlocked that aha for me, and then I stopped caring about, is my podcast growing? And I stopped caring about any of the sponsors or any of that shit.

Right.

Okay, but let's get back to you. So let me toss something at you. Let's play a game of thinking catch. When you describe what you describe, so let's listen to the words. How a creator can be successful without necessarily chasing followers and likes and the stupidities. Is that it?

I think that would be like a Really great way to frame that. Yes.

Okay, great. And we're not worried about the languaging yet. We just want to get the ideas on the table. But that, you think, is your— let's just call it founding insight, your aha, or the missing in the creator space that you see and the missing that you would like to be the solution to.

Yes. Yes. Because just to extrapolate, it creates the revenue that can then do all the things that we talked about. Team marketing paid, all of that. It starts with revenue.

Okay, so I don't know the answer, but I'll say this, like the beginning to the question that might lead to the answer. When you say all of that, Sachit, what I hear is agency. And so let me elaborate. Why do those of us who become creators become creators? I think the ones that you want—

yes.

Yeah. I think the ones that you want to work with, number one, are missionaries, not mercenaries.

Right.

So if I come to you and I say, look, I don't give a fuck what we do, just make me as successful as MrBeast. And if I have to skydive off buildings naked with, you know, uh, Sofia Viagra, then that's what I'll do, uh, et cetera, et cetera. Um, so, so I assume you want to work with mission-driven creators who care about their work, who are trying to legitimately create new intellectual capital. that is breakthrough, that's going to make a difference to people. Yes.

Yes. The other side, been there, done that. Not anymore. Right.

The people who are chasing fame and likes and all that stuff for the sake of it. Okay. So given that's the case, one thing I hear is agency. And what agency means to me is freedom. I have the freedom to create what I want to create. I have freedom in my life right here. I'm sitting talking to you in a Ramones t-shirt and a pair of shorts. I'm not in a suit, and I sure as fuck didn't have to get in my car and drive to San Francisco to have a meeting with you.

Right.

So just that alone is radical agency compared to where the working world was not that long ago. Right. So the freedom to create, What I want to create, freedom and flexibility in my life. And there's a particular kind of— you said the word art, art, thinking, education, whatever, however the creator thinks about what the thing they're creating is, that I am free to create what I want to create. And I have agency in my life. And that agency comes from economic success and the fulfillment around creating the stuff that I think I want to create to make the difference that I want to make.

Yes, exactly. One thing that's actually interesting is there was a phrase that I used at the start, which was— and I know this is too complex and not clear, but I'll share it. It was this idea of make a living from your art without selling your soul. I think the concept of without selling your soul Spoke to a lot of people and I got good feedback on it initially. And now that I look back, I think as I started creating the McDonald's french fries content, people didn't really care. I was like, oh, I guess they don't really care. But I'm like, oh, I probably wasn't speaking to the right people because they just wanted the fame instead.

Yes. Yes. Which goes back to, I'd rather matter to 100 people than not matter to 7 billion people.

Right.

Okay, so what there is to do now is to think deeply about that problem and frame, name, and claim the problem.

You know what I see as an image when you say that? Yeah, what is A factory of lab rats that are basically hitting the button on the content hamster wheel, never able to get off because as soon as they get off, ad deals go away, algorithm stuff happens, or blah, blah, blah. That basically leads to burnout 3 to 4 years down the line.

Yes. Well, and here's the other part of it that is important to say. The only reason to use the social platforms or any of the major platforms, right, is to make connections and build trust such that you can move people from— pick the platform— to your world. That is to say, your community, your email list, et cetera. And as somebody who's been deplatformed and replatformed 4 fucking times by 4 major platforms, We are on a mission to educate all creators.

Yep.

By all means, use these platforms to get to potential audience, hang out where the digital tribe you want to attract lives, and get them the fuck out of there as quickly as possible and get them into a world that is a world you can control. We got deplatformed by Amazon. With Snow Leopard. It was the number one bestseller.

I saw that recently. Yes.

When they deplatformed us, I can explain why. It was brutally evil, in my opinion. They essentially accused us of theft, and rather than talking to us about it, they took our product off the market. And the theft they accused us of was we had a beautiful image of a snow leopard on the COVID of the book. Well, Eddie Cole and I did not take that fucking picture. A photographer did.

Yeah.

But we did what you do today in the digital world. When you want a legendary picture, you go to a website, in this case Shutterstock, and you license the image. And in our case, we're in the intellectual capital business. We're not in the business of stealing intellectual capital.

Right.

We pay for the image and we pay for the license for that use, because you know very well there's different prices you pay for different kind of use cases for content like that. So we buy the rights to the snow leopard Right. From Shutterstock. Turns out Amazon has an algorithm that checks for images on covers of books that fires another algorithm that goes out on the internet to see if they can find that image. When they found the image on Shutterstock, they immediately shut us down.

Mm-hmm.

And it took over a week to get back. And the only reason we went back after we proved multiple times that we had licensed that image They still wouldn't let us back. And so we had to put up a cover with no Snow Leopard image on it, and now we're back. And for the record, we were number 1 on the day we came back. So, Right. It's just another indication for all creators, you have to be able to deliver this all on your own. We are currently rebuilding categorypirates.com, and you're gonna be able to buy everything that we create directly from us. And we will view Amazon and all these other channels as adjunct channels because in the case of our work, we drive— hard to know exactly because the analytics aren't great, but probably 80% of the sales ourselves. We do pick up some shit from other platforms, which is great. People accidentally find us. That's awesome. But for the most part, we drive our revenue.

And just to add to that, even if you don't get deplatformed from these platforms, This is a tale as old as time, which is at some point, once you build a following, your organic reach is going to go down so that they can start selling ads and get you to pay ads because that's how they make their money, right?

Yes.

It's going to happen to every platform.

Correct. So build your own platform is the point. Okay. But anyway, all that said, let's get back to your category design. So what we need to do is think about framing Claiming and naming the problem.

So sort of like what I described as like this, like content hamster wheel. Find like a few words to just like really sum that, sum that up.

Yeah. And look, it might be very— sometimes it's very simple. It might be as simple as that. We did a series of these: the big brand lie, the big product lie, the big category lies. So it could be The big creator lie.

Right.

And the lie is build followers and all will be good.

And that's true, actually. That might be the name.

That might be the framing of the problem.

That's right.

The creator lie. And a radically different point of view where you explain to people what you've been chasing and how you've been chasing it. A, is a dumb thing to do. And B, if you're successful at it, to the discussion we had earlier on, you get to the top 1% of podcasters and you make $6,000 a year. And here's the thing creators are learning. You can't print out your, uh, uh, your, your, uh, chartable fucking analysis thing. on how awesome your podcast is, bring that into Trader Joe's, and they give you groceries for it.

Yep. I always say it won't buy you tacos.

It won't buy you tacos.

And to add to what you're saying, if you look at like the Twitter stuff, right, like people are building all these like massive followings with these threads that are basically just like the same, like, like, like you said, like McDonald's. How many of those people are actually going to buy from you? They might buy a course on how to build a Twitter audience, and then they're going to create more McDonald's content. But beyond that, a lot of those people—

Which is what all the hustle porn stars have done. All they've done is perpetuate the insanity by telling people to be more like them. That's what John Lee Dumas is. Don't you want to be me?

You create these mini-mes, essentially.

Right. That's right. And leader— I know it's trite, Leaders don't create followers or copycats. Leaders create other leaders. When we did the category science research and we put it in the fucking book, do you know how many people, like big-time writers, big-time people in the publishing industry, said to us, what are you doing? I said, what do you mean, what are we doing? They said, we've never seen any research like this before. And Eddie's first book was published by a major publisher. My first book was published by a major publisher. Big advances in both cases.

Right.

I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that 2 of the biggest business book publishers in the world have no idea why those books sell. They've not done this research. They don't fucking know. It's shocking.

Anyway, I can actually add to your point of, without naming names, being in a position where I got a call for one of the top authors before a book came out, and it was along the lines of, the publisher has this budget, or we have this budget. Publisher has no fucking idea what they're doing. Can you run this?

Right.

And I've been there for those calls. So exactly, they don't know. They don't know.

They imagine being a book publisher and not having any data science, category science on what sells and what doesn't sell. It's a stunner. Uh, anyways, so when we published the book, people said to us, well, why did you give this away? You could have sat on this for 20 years and had a giant, one of the most prolific or profound competitive advantages in writing and creating. And we said to all of them the same thing. Well, yes, if you're looking at the world from a competitive lens, if we thought what we were doing is competing with other nonfiction, other business writers and thinkers, then we would have done exactly that. But we're not competing with anybody. We're in the creation business, right? Our mission is to inspire others, other legendary creators, to do their thing and have radical, embarrassing success doing it. And so, as trite as it sounds, Most people try to create followers. Legendary leaders try to create more leaders, and ideally leaders that surpass them. If somebody wrote a book based on some of the teachings and it outsold anything we ever did by 100x, we'd be fucking stoked. That's the point, right?

Yeah.

We're trying to make the world a different place. Category designers increase the size of the category. We're in a mega category called nonfiction business books. We want more legendary, non-obvious, obvious, um, business books and, and breakthrough thinking in the world because we know there's a lot of breakthrough thinking that got published this year that nobody will pay any attention to.

Yeah.

Because they don't understand obvious, obvious, non-obvious, obvious. They don't understand the unlock around that. What you're trying to do is not write well. You're trying to become known for a category that you own. And the way you do that is by creating radically different intellectual capital in an obvious, non-obvious way and wrapping it into a new category and educating the world on that difference. And once you do that, you get to be Gladwell. And that's awesome. The world needs more legendary thinkers, more legendary creators. And so it's a complete mindfuck for people. We're creators in the business of supporting creation.

And what you said about creating more leaders and followers is so interesting because, again, I've been behind the scenes of a lot of these sort of hustle porn people, right? And I think what's interesting is that people don't realize, and a lot of people have sort of debunked what they do, is a lot of their courses and stuff— well, actually, I'll make 2 points. So first is, one thing I really thought about was if you look at— it's funny, I've repeated this point so many times— legendary companies, right? They, like you said, grow through word of mouth. When you think of a lot of these online hustle porn creators and their courses, I can count on one hand the number of courses that have good word of mouth. Like, think about when someone told you, hey, I took this course from this person and it was so great, right?

Right.

And it doesn't happen because a lot of it was created by marketers who didn't understand product. They were really good at marketing, but not at product. And I think because of that, because they didn't want the responsibility of like, the course is not working, a lot of them actually like, I think like studied like how like cults work. And really became those like champions where it's like my way or the highway. You have to become like me. If you're not successful, it's your fault, not mine. And really like created followers to become like them instead of creating the leaders like you were saying.

Well, yes. And this is the Kardashianization of all of this stuff. And here's the really evil part of this. In order for that influencer hustle porn model to work, what they need to do is create envy. And so the reason Tai Lopez does videos in front of Lamborghinis, right, is to make you feel bad about yourself that you don't have Lamborghinis.

Mm-hmm.

And everything Kim Kardashian does fundamentally is designed to make you feel bad that you don't look like her and have her lifestyle. And if you consume her products, Or in the case of Tai Lopez or Grant Cardone or Gary Vee or all of these people, right?

Mm-hmm.

They are creating an envy gap. They must make you feel bad about yourself, and they must make you feel that you wish they, they, that you were them. And then they sell you a boatload of garbage that will get you to be like them. And whether it's a new hair care product or a course or whatever the bullshit is, What they are doing is monetizing an envy gap that they created in you. And so just think about this. Just think about being a person whose business model is making people feel shit about themselves to drive revenue.

The worst thing is they don't even— a lot of them will actually say something along the lines of, I'm not doing that, which is another marketing tactic because you'll say, I don't do XYZ, but like actually you do like XYZ or you'll All these assholes talk about authenticity, right? Right, exactly.

Okay, well, the people who talk about that you have to be authentic, they're the most inauthentic fucks in the world.

I'll give you the best example of this. I saw someone posting authentically about dealing with depression and mental health, and they did a post on Facebook. I was like, cool, this person's being really helpful. And alongside the post was this photo of them looking sad. And the photo was a professional photo. So they hired a pro photographer to take photos of them looking sad so they could authentically talk about mental health.

Yes. It's called a manipulation.

What's the— so going back to what we were talking about, we go from problem to POV to category. Let's say someone has all that figured out, right? What is the flip side of that? If they shouldn't use envy, How do they get the message out? Or how do they— I guess that goes into the idea of how do you create a message that scales?

So instead of monetizing envy, monetize insight.

Can you share an example of maybe how you've done that?

Yeah, I'll give you a great one. It's a thread we've been on for a while, and it's a big component of our next book. So we had this insight a few years ago, Sachit, And it goes— it was based on a visit that a friend of mine from London who came to visit us here in Santa Cruz with his children. And I hadn't seen him and his wife and the kids in a long time. And so the kids were kind of 14 and 16, kind of in that sort of range.

Mm-hmm.

And my wife, Carrie, being the legendary person that she is, she creates this whole experience for them. We have this cart, we bring wood to the fire, to the beach, we set up a fire. We roast weenies, we have s'mores, we drink beers and wine, and we enjoy the sunset, right? They live in London. This is not an experience you could have there. And this is what we do. Well, and this was several years ago. Well, as we're doing it, what are the kids doing? They're on their fucking phones. And me being their crazy uncle, I say, hey, you might want to look up— there's this big orange and red thing over here. It looks pretty fucking awesome. And they're like, oh, yeah, that's cool. And then they get back to their phone. Maybe they take a picture of it, and then they get back to their phone.

Yep.

And 20 minutes later, I say, hey, there's this thing going slop, slop, slop over there. It's called the Pacific Ocean. It's pretty fucking beautiful. You might want to— and this goes on. And sooner or later, I do what I always do with young people. I just leave them alone. Anyway, here's the insight. The insight goes like this. If you're under 35, You came of age since the cloud and mobile computing.

Mm-hmm.

And the aha is, if you're my buddy Paul's kids, the reason you're on your phone and you don't pay attention to the conversation and you don't watch the sunset and the beach is because the sunset and the beach and the conversation the adults are having are interrupting your real life.

Mm-hmm.

Well, that unlocked a big idea, which we've written a lot about now, which is the difference between native digitals and native analogs. And the difference, simply stated, is if you're native digital, your primary life experience is digital first. It's how you connect with your friends, it's how you deal with school, It's how you meet folks that you want to get romantically involved with. It's how you play. It's how you play sports. So how you live, work, and play if you're a native digital— and there's exceptions to every rule, of course, but for the most part is digital first. As a matter of fact, they're so digital first that I'll give you a simple example. If you get on a Zoom, with a native digital. And remind me, Sachit, how old are you?

Right at that limit, 34.

Yeah, that's what I thought. You're sort of right there. So I'll speak for myself as a, as a clear native analog. When I get on a Zoom with a bunch of people who are in their 20s, at the end of the Zoom, if you ask them what we just did, here's what they say. We had an in-person meeting. And if you ask me what we just did, I would tell you we had a Zoom or a digital or virtual meeting.

Right.

Native digitals, when they communicate with each other and they're planning something, if they're going to be doing it in the analog world, they have to make it explicit. So they say, they say, let's meet up IRL, in real life, because their default position is that it will be digital. And it's so default to digital that when they're going to go actually have a burger or go to a movie, or I don't know what they're going to go do, they must explicitly state it as such, because if they don't, their friends will assume it's going to be digital. Okay, so that's the first aha, that native digitals experience life in a 180-degree different way. The second aha is if you're over 35, you're the last native analogs that will walk the earth, right? Because the native digitals are a new category of human being. We've never had humans whose primary life experience was digital and their secondary life was analog. I'm a radically digital person. I've been in the technology industry for over 35 years. I have a rich digital life. I make money in the digital world, and I've built incredible relationships digital first, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so older people say, hey, I'm all about digital. I worked with punch cards. I was on computers before they were computers. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I say, yeah, and your primary life is analog. Okay, so what I just shared with you is category design. I just gave you a new lens, a new New mental scaffolding for understanding what we believe is the biggest happening in plain sight change in the world right now. Now, just finish it off. Why does this matter? Well, here's why it matters. The average age of an S&P 500 CEO is 58 years old. They don't even know this is happening. They just think this is a new channel. They relate to the digital world like it's a new form of TV, right? That's how they think about it. They don't understand that native digitals live their life digital first. And here's a simple example. Native analog CEOs are trying to get their employees to come back to work after the pandemic. Come back to work.

Right.

Well, only a native analog would say that, because if you're a native analog, work is a physical place. I was reading an article about it this morning. They're worried that if they're not in a physical place, how will they know they're being productive? How will they know they're not goofing off and going to the beach and fucking off and not doing their job? That's what they're all worried about, because for them, work is an analog place, right? Every native digital I know who works for a company that did that to them, in my family and in my life, has quit. Yeah, my niece Melissa right now is looking for a new job. Yeah, that's the first criteria. I can, I can work from anywhere I want.

Yeah, I mean, if I think about myself, I worked at a company for a year and I've been digital since then, right?

And so if you're native analog— if you're native digital, Work isn't a place, it's a space, a digital space.

Right.

So here's the aha. If you're native analog and you don't understand any of this stuff and you're in business, you're only going to have 2 problems. You're not going to be able to recruit anybody under 35, and you're not going to be able to market and sell to anybody under 35. Other than that, you're going to do great. And there will be more market cap destruction in the S&P 500 over this one issue over the next decade than any other issue. And it is the biggest opening for entrepreneurs in history, because if you're a native digital entrepreneur or you're a native analog entrepreneur who understands this, you can go into the native digital world and be wildly successful. Okay, so what I just did is take an insight that started with the kids on the beach, I did some reflexive thinking.

Mm-hmm.

I shared that thinking with 2 other legendarily smart guys, Eddie and Cole. We built on the thinking. We did some research. We got some data. We built it out even further, and we came up with a new category of thinking about the biggest demographic change that is happening right now. That if you don't understand, you will fail. And the proof is everywhere. So that is an example of how you frame, claim, and name a big, new, different piece of intellectual capital. In this case, one that we think should be obvious. We think it should be on the COVID of the fucking Wall Street Journal every day.

Right.

But it's not. And so we keep evangelizing this idea, and when people get it, they have a radical unlock, and it opens up whole new possibilities in the way they build their careers, their lives, and their companies.

Yeah.

And so that's an example of how you have an insight. You don't just go, ah, fucking kids. You actually think about something. You collaboratively engage with smart people. You do some research to see if you can prove or disprove Your initial insight. And once you get grounded in, wait a minute, this is a very valuable thing, you're very thoughtful about framing, claiming, and naming. The languaging matters. Native digital to native analog. That's an unlock for people.

Mm-hmm.

And then what I laid down for you is the point of view that articulates the value of that radically different insight. Based on that intellectual capital or the insight that we built intellectual capital on, which I now share with you. And now we begin to write about it.

And that point of view stacks up with other point of views. That becomes what goes under the category that you create.

Yes. Because from purely category design perspective, if there's a new category of human, that's emerged that is radically different than any human that has come before. Humans have roughly been the same thing for about 13,000 years when we started farming.

Right.

Yeah. When we started to move from hunter and gatherer and so forth, roughly 13,000 years ago, if my Googling is right. And so humans have been roughly the same. There was a big unlock that happened when we moved to the Industrial Revolution. You could argue there was a new category of human there.

Right.

So I think, and I think that's a valid argument. Um, and so certainly at a minimum, since, since the Industrial Revolution, we now have, uh, native digitals who are, who want to make a living being a creator, AKA somebody who creates new intellectual capital and monetizes that intellectual capital at scale through the internet in a digital way.

Right.

So most people don't know that's happening. So what I just walked you through is an architecture of how to, A, be paying attention so you have the insight. B, test the insight with smart people that you will know are not just going to roll over. They're going to push and pull on it.

Right.

Then go and do some research to see if you can prove or disprove Because we don't want to be out there with something that's stupid, that just sort of seems smart in the moment. We open the aperture again, talk to other smart people, push and pull the thing. And then when we realize we really, truly have something and we purposely create new languaging to represent the new insight/intellectual capital, to make the argument that there's a new category of human.

Right.

Because you can't describe new things with old languaging. Well, guess what? We are now acknowledged as the leaders in thinking about this new category of human. And it fits inside of the larger mission of the category design lens, which is, if you think about the world through the category design lens, you see things In this case, that is a radical change that's happening in plain sight that the vast majority of people, including S&P 500 CEOs, don't even fucking see. As a matter of fact, they so don't see it, they're trying to get people to, quote, come back to work.

One of the funniest things, by the way, in the books was when you said, what is category design? Well, that is a category we designed. And sort of your category design, category design. And I want to reflect back on what you said about the native digital versus analog because I think this is the power of this discussion and sharing it because it sparked an idea in me. I don't think it's named properly, but let's talk about the framing. So, in the same way that you've sort of created that contrast, I could essentially create a contrast which is on one side, it's the follower chasers. And it's basically like all the things that we talked about, which is only 1% are really successful with ads, most leads to lead to burnout. They don't have a team, they're working alone, they end up in depression, unhappiness, all those things. Now on the other side, I can create what could be like mastery and craft creators where instead of chasing followers, they find a few people that are interested and actually provide value and charge more. This lets them hire a team, all the things that we talked about, and that really lets them invest in their business and It's the difference between being like Kanye, who's famous for everyone, and then you end up going crazy, versus maybe like a Phish, where you have a few loyal fans, but they're really loyal and they will stay with you for years in the long term instead of you being done in 3 years because they're loyal to you and the work that you create, something along those lines.

Yes, and what you just said is the difference between obvious and non-obvious. So you can be radically successful doing obvious. Justin Bieber. There's nothing non-obvious. He's not a category designer. He's just a fucking pop star.

Right.

There's nothing new. It's just fucking terrible pop music. There's been terrible pop music forever. He's just successful at it. But just like the discussion around the fuck guy, nobody's going to remember the fuck guy. People are going to remember Gladwell. Right. Nobody's going to remember Bieber. They're going to remember the Beatles, right? They're going to remember Run-DMC. They're going to remember Jay-Z. And so that's the difference between a snow leopard and a successful short-term obvious. Obvious. Because here's the aha. When you're doing obvious shit, you're replaceable.

Yep.

It's commodity content. It's commodity thinking. It's not net new intellectual capital. It's existing intellectual capital that you've barely even re-swizzled.

Yeah, if you— I mean, if you look at the algorithms, right, you're sitting there scrolling, and I think Hasan Minhaj made a point of this on, I think, the Colin and Samir podcast. Let's say something happens to me or whatever, or die or whatever. He's like, well, People are going to flick and be like, oh, he died. Flick and you're gone and you're forgotten online.

Right.

And that's the world that we live in.

That's exactly right.

So you create these contrasts, POV, then you take it to the category, and from there you can then create the ideas. This idea is essentially the thing that scales because it's so non-obvious and gets shared.

Correct. And here's how you can tell somebody's doing this. When you consume them, when you look at their work, when you look at their website, when you look at the COVID of their book, how big is the font around their name and how big is the font around their idea?

Right.

One of the things we talk about in Snow Leopard, we had a lot of fun doing this. What you'll see is an author will have huge success with a book. And it'll be based on radically differentiated intellectual capital that positions them as a snow leopard, that is to say, in a category of one. And they get confused. They think it's about them, right? See, the reason we love Bruce Springsteen is not because we love Bruce Springsteen the person. We love what his music means to us. And here's one of the big unlocks in Snow Leopard. We go back to the category science research. Well, guess what? The 2 biggest selling book categories— there's 7 or 8 mega categories, we break them down— but the 2 big ones by far, personal development, personal growth, personal finance. Guess what they're not? Autobiographies. In general, autobiographies don't sell, and books about you slash me sell. Well, what is that telling us? No one cares about your fucking story. This bullshit about share your story, share your journey. People like to do the most valuable thing you have is your journey. Share your journey. No one gives a fuck about your story or journey. No one. They care about them. They buy books to help them. And the only reason your journey matters at all is if there's something in your story that makes a difference to them. And the unlock here for creators is don't make you the fucking hero.

Yeah.

All the influencer porn shit says, oh, you're the one, you're the star, you're going to be famous. Get your phone and talk into it. No, they want more of you. No, what they want is something that makes a difference to them. And so the hero in your work is the reader, is the consumer of your content. They're the hero. You're at service Of them. You know, Billie Eilish, the mega music star? Incredible. Well, in the music domain, she's highly unique. I would argue she's somewhat, if not a snow leopard, brings a different style, different fashion, et cetera. She feels very fresh at a minimum, right? Well, guess what? A couple of years back— and she sells a bazillion downloads and all the stuff, right? And God bless her.

Yep.

So a few years ago, I forget who the publisher is, Sachit, but some big-ass publisher goes, hey, great, you should write a book and tell your story. And they give her a giant advance that she can share. And she does. The book fucking doesn't sell because no one cares about us. They care about them. You've probably heard this term servant leadership. Yes. Right? It's about them, not about you. And this is the big mindfuck that's happened to everybody in the creative world. All of the hustle porn influencer people have convinced you that it's about you, and that what you should do is share you. Oh, they want more of you.

Yeah.

No, they don't. They don't give a fuck about you. No one gives a fuck about Kim Kardashian.

While you were telling me, I just wrote this idea where we could almost do like a series or narrative series, which is Confessions of a Content Creator. Um, and it talks about that contrast of like the ones that like have fame and are burning out and all these different things. Yes.

And so another way for you to frame the problem, just occurred to me when you said that, is the creator trap, right? Because I think we fall into it, myself included. Listen, I'm embarrassed as fuck to say, but in the very beginning I did post some bullshit photos of myself quoting myself because that's what we were all told to do.

It could even be—

And then I did it a few times and I went, you know what? If this is what you have to do to be successful, then I am not going to be successful because I'm not fucking doing this. This is fucking stupid. This is not me. This is crazy. Quoting myself with a picture of myself makes me sick. And because it's not— because I never gave a fuck about that. I give a fuck about— I think category design is the biggest superpower in business, and it fucking is, and I can prove it.

Right.

And so me and my co-pirates are on a mission to give category design to the world. And yes, do we want to make some money along the way? We do. We believe in capitalism.

Everyone should.

We're not Mother Teresa, but To our earlier point, if all I did wanted to do was make money, I would stop doing all this fucking creator shit and all I would do is work with companies, right? So anyway, you get my point.

Yeah, no, I just wrote down Creator Trap: How to Finally Get Off the Content Hamster Wheel. Something along those lines could be like the subtitle of it.

Yeah, that's the framing of the problem. Yeah. And then name the solution. So frame, claim, and name the problem.

Yeah.

And then have the solution. And here's the other aha, Sachit. If you own the problem as defined by you, as designed by you, that's why we say category design. You designed a way of thinking, mental scaffolding, a new lens on a problem, and you evangelize that problem. People assume you, your company, your brand is the solution because there's no way you'd be evangelizing the problem if you weren't the solution.

Right. And the reason I just went to your book again is I think from this discussion, what I've realized is I have a power point of view. What I really need to do is, like you said, frame and name the problem and the solution, and that will give the category name from there. Yes.

Can I share with you a story about this?

Yes, please.

Because it shows the power of this, and it shows how niching down super hard, super tight, expands your category and therefore the difference you can make and the money you can make. I have a gal who I'm friendly with named Joanne Molinaro, and I got to know her because she came on my podcast. And Joanne, Is most well known as the Korean Vegan. And go check her out on, on Insta and, and all the platforms. The Korean Vegan. So she's a Korean gal, as the name might suggest. She married an Italian dude named Molinaro, and, uh, Molinaro is a vegetarian. And if you know much about Korean food, and I'm not an expert, but all I know is I like to eat it. And my buddy Eddie is of Korean descent. And so, you know, I have a little bit of an insight. But anyway, regardless, so she says, okay, I'll try being a vegan.

Right.

And Joanne is a high-powered lawyer working at some super ding-dong agent law firm in, I think, Chicago, if I remember right. Incredible career, great school. You know, she's a superstar, right? And, but in her spare time, she loves cooking and she loves photography.

Right.

So she starts Googling around Korean vegan recipes and she doesn't find very much. And she's like, well, fuck, if I'm gonna be a vegetarian, I wanna eat the food that my mother and my grandmother and my culture that I grew up with, that I love. But, you know, I can't figure it out. There's nobody there. So like every legendary creator and entrepreneur who discovers a missing, just like you've discovered a missing, Mm-hmm. She says, well, fuck, I need to figure out how to make Korean vegan food. And so she goes to work, and as she's discovering how to do stuff, she thinks, well, maybe other people feel like me. I don't know how many Korean vegans there are, but I'll start sharing what I'm learning and the discoveries I'm making. And because I'm into photography as well, I'll take beautiful photos and videos of this shit, and I'll share recipes, and I'll do this, that, and the other, and I'll share that shit on the internet. Well, here's what happens by niching down in a radically tight niche. Vegan. There's a bazillion vegans. There's a bazillion vegan cookbooks. There's a bazillion vegans on Insta, TikTok, fill in the blank doing that. There's a bazillion chefs. Being a celebrity chef today is a massive new category. Thankfully, I love chefs. I love food. I live in a food heaven myself.

Yeah.

But if you look at it from a landscape perspective, lots of celebrity chefs, lots of vegan. We had Moby on the podcast. He did a vegan cookbook, for fuck's sakes. Tons of vegan shit and tons of Korean cooking shit. But her Venn diagram, total breakthrough, right? She has so much success as a creator. She quits her fucking job. She writes a massive book backed by a massive publisher, and she leaves a world as a knowledge worker, the most esteemed knowledge worker you can be. But the problem with being a knowledge worker is you're paid by the hour. Even if you're paid $5,000 an hour, you're still paid by the hour. You're a lawyer. Well, now she creates radically differentiated intellectual capital. around Korean vegan. She establishes herself as the leader. She becomes the category queen, aka the snow leopard of Korean vegan. And while she can't tell you exactly what percentage of her consumers are neither Korean nor vegan, it's a massive percentage. It might be half. That's because I'm not Korean. And I'm not vegan, but I love legendary food, and she makes legendary food. And she also happens to be a very compelling person, a very enchanting person, a person with great skills. She trained herself as a photographer. So her Venn diagram is a very special diagram, and she's a very special person. And so she's a snow leopard. And the mindfuck for most people is by Creating such a radically tight category, right? Not only does she dominate the Korean vegan space, which she created, some meaningful percentage of people who love her and buy her shit are neither Koreans or vegans.

Yep. Um, I have a quick story to plus one what you just said, and then we'll drive this to a close because I want to be respectful of your time. Um, as you were sharing this, I was actually thinking of another author Her name is Priyanka. She wrote a book called The Modern Tiffin: On-the-Go Vegan Dishes with a Global Flair. And what she's done is kind of like taken the concept that you talked about, but applied it to quick on-the-go Indian meals and created that— essentially created the book, which is like the Indian Vegan.

Thank you. I didn't know about her. And as a local Indian food place that we love says around here, You can't be in a bad mood when you're eating Indian food. Again, I love Indian food. Love it. And if I discovered her, all day long.

That's right. Or the other phrase is, once you go brown, the other colors let you down. Okay. I'll drive this to a close because, again, I want to be respectful of your time. These are the questions we always end with. I call it the Fast 5. We'll do a few of those. And I'll modify them a little bit. I usually ask, what are the 1 to 3 books that you were inspired by? I'll change that to, who are the, let's say, 1 to 3 or however many ever you want to mention, category designers that you were inspired by?

So, I'll give you some from a business perspective, some from a creative perspective. The first category designer I fell in love with as a little boy is Muhammad Ali. And the reason Muhammad Ali is not just a legendary boxer is he was the first athlete at his level of notoriety and success and fame to become a radical political and social activist when he refused to go to Vietnam. And they stripped him of his title, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he became an advocate for human rights, and he tried to make a difference in the world. And he sacrificed greatly because most people— and if you know anything about the fight game, you understand that where fighters peak, he was around his peak ages when this happened. And it cost him a lot in terms of what could have happened for him in his career. But his commitment to make the world a different place was such that he was willing to do that. And there was something, as a little boy, I would never have understood that, of course, at the time. But there's something so compelling about him and the use of his showmanship and his poetry. And if you even dream about beating me up, you better apologize and all that amazing stuff, right? So it was, again, a powerful Venn diagram. Showman, boxer. Of course, he changed his name. He changed his religion. I didn't understand. I knew as a little boy he used to be called Cassius Clay, but I didn't know what the fuck Islam was. I was a boy, 7 years old or whatever, right? But there was something radically compelling about him. And as I got older and understood why I was so attracted to him, it became clear to me that he was somebody who broke and took new ground.

Right.

And the aha here is, if you think about all of the people that you love, respect, and admire, these people, you respect and admire them because they were different, because they did break and take new ground. They had the courage to pursue something that many others had not done. And we respect and admire them. As such. So that would be one.

I can see the Ali photo right behind you.

That's why he's there. I don't have Muhammad here for no fucking reason. And I was lucky enough to have his agent on my podcast years ago.

Oh, wow.

He told amazing stories about Muhammad Ali. And just God bless Muhammad Ali. In the business world, I think in our modern era, it would be hard not to say that Steve Jobs isn't the most impactful, or certainly amongst the most impactful entrepreneurial technology category designers. I mean, it's obvious. And so I think he's got to be a hero. Another hero would be Sara Blakely. Because it would be very easy for her to have told the world she made a better girdle. But she didn't do that. She insisted that she had invented something new. And she said, it's not a girdle, it's a new category called shapewear. And of course, Spanx, the brand. And she's the greatest self-made entrepreneurial billionaire woman in the United States. And I think she's fucking awesome. And then in the creator world, this may sound funny because most people aren't going to know who he is. My producer and dear friend, Jason DeFilippo.

Hats off to Jason.

Because in my opinion, Jason is the GOAT of podcast production. As you know, he worked with Tim in the very, very beginning. As you know, he worked with Jordan for years, Noah Kagan, Kevin Rose, and his knowledge about podcasting is incredible. His podcast, Grumpy Old Geeks, with Brian Schulmeister, is one of my favorites. And he just launched a new podcast that— and I'm biased because I love the man, but he's just launched a new podcast called Boot Up with Jason, where he gives you the tech news in 10 minutes or less, and he does a legendary job. And so I think Jason is one of the unsung heroes in the creator world who has made a material contribution to podcasting.

Mm-hmm.

That while most people don't necessarily know who Jason is, I feel his contribution literally every day.

I would agree. Next one is, who's someone you're grateful for that maybe you haven't had the chance to thank enough that made a huge impact for you?

Oh, fuck. That's a long list. Yeah. My grandfather, Jack. There's no way I'd be who I am without him. My mother, Jackie, who was a single mother and brought me and my sister up. My father, Bruce, who, even though my parents divorced very young, he was deeply engaged in our lives. He took us camping and he taught me to ski, and he gave me the outdoors. You know, my wife Carrie, I could tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, I'm not sure I'm alive today without her, given everything we've been through over the last handful of years. And some couples go through horrible radical fire and it tears them apart, and others it brings them closer. And so I can tell you, I wouldn't be here right now if it weren't for Carrie.

And I remember meeting her when we briefly visited you. And I think there's people that, you know, like, like the first word that comes to mind is like kindness. Um, and that was my experience.

Uh, yes. Um, and she is a force of nature. She is a result production machine. It's, it's, it's breathtaking. I agree.

Um, last one, or one more, which is for, for you, uh, and we've talked about it a lot, which is what does it, for you, what does it mean to be a conscious creator?

What it means for me is very, very clear. And this may sound corny to some, but I believe we are all here for a reason, a purpose. And I believe our number one mission on the planet is to figure out what our purpose is. And then surrender our bullshit and be 100% focused and be on purpose.

I love that.

And so as a creator, what I realize for me is I'm very clear what my purpose is. And thanks to my friends, family, and faith, I'm generally pretty clear when I'm on purpose and not. And, and so I think any creator who's clear about their purpose and becomes a missionary about that, you know, we just did an episode, for example, with a gal named Kat Van Dam, and she's an executive in the publishing business around family and kids content.

Mm-hmm.

And roughly 3 years ago, she had a double mastectomy. after a cancer diagnosis. And she made a radical choice, which was a choice that was not presented to her. And many doctors and others tried to argue her out of it, which is she decided to have the mastectomy and to not get reconstruction and to be, and I quote, flat and happy. And she wrote a book called Flat and Happy with a doctor and I forget what the other medical professional is, maybe a counselor or something along that line, but 2 others who are professionals in dealing with breast cancer. And so I find that radically inspiring that Kat would make a different choice that was the right choice for her. She doesn't invalidate women who want to have reconstruction. If that's what you want to have, by all means, she says. But that for some women, that's not the right choice. And she's on a mission to make sure— see, I believe 1 in 8, if I'm remembering right, Sachit, women is going to experience breast cancer. And if you're a human being in our world today, cancer is going to touch your life. I think the numbers are almost the same for men with prostate cancer. So anyway, the point being, Kat was faced with this situation. She did a bunch of homework and she realized she wanted to make a different choice, and she was pissed that doctors and other professionals didn't even present it as an option.

Mm-hmm.

And so the reason she wrote her book with 2 medical professionals is to walk people through the choices and give them a new framework, a new category of thinking about breast cancer, and that there was a paradigm, if it was one that spoke to you, where you could be, quote, flat and happy. And so I respect the shit out of that. That's a woman who made a courageous choice that was the right choice for her. And she, as a creator, did the very hard work to go write a book about this that is a extraordinary piece of work that is deeply well researched. It's not just one woman's story.

Right.

And so I respect creators like that who have a mission, who in this case have a very challenging situation in their life and decide to turn that challenging situation into a new way of thinking about something that has the potential to help thousands, if not millions.

One interesting parallel with that is this idea of the courageous choice that even Muhammad Ali had. Last one is, and then we'll bring this to a close, what are you most excited about in the next 3 years or 5 years? What are you looking forward to? What gets you going? What's the future?

So you didn't ask me this, but I'm terrified about our future. I'm terrified about the prospect of nuclear war. And I also think that we've gotten to a place in our country where more Americans hate other Americans than at any point in history.

Yes.

And what you and I have been doing for the last 17 hours, or however long this conversation has been going on, is having what you could think of as a real conversation or an authentic dialogue where 2 guys who care about a set of ideas play with those ideas and go back and forth. Well, we don't have the ability to do that anymore. What most people call listening is actually called waiting to talk. And what most people call dialogue is actually not dialogue. It's, I have my opinion and my job is to win. That is to say, prove you wrong and get you to think like I do, and vice versa. And so that's what we spend our time doing. What we don't spend our time doing is doing what you and I have been doing.

And that's why I love this art form of podcasting, because we can do that.

Well, and podcasting is the only medium where it can happen right now. I'm royally pissed. I've been consuming a bunch of these debates, these political debates, and if I hear one more fucking debate moderator say, and you have 30 seconds to respond, go fuck yourself. We're talking about abortion. All political debates immediately must be moved to podcasts, and there is no time constraint. Fuck that 30 seconds to talk about gun control. You out of your mind? Pieces of shit. But I digress. So those are some of the things that worry me. I'm very concerned about violence in our country because of the weaponization of political polarization and the fact that we've lost an understanding that steel sharpens steel. And I don't want to live in an all-Republican country, and I don't want to live in an all-Democrat country. I want the push and the pull. I'm a radical independent.

Right.

So anyway, those are some things I'm worried about, and obviously the environment. But that said, um, it's the greatest time in history to be an entrepreneur.

I agree. Um, and the thing I was actually thinking when you said that is like, hopefully someone takes the, the idea of the political debates Uh, podcasting, reads the book Snow Leopard, and creates a new category for discourse for politicians. I think that would be amazing.

I sure hope so. And if anybody wants to do that and they have the chops to do it and they want a little love and support, let me know. I support that, um, very much. And so that's what I feel great about. We live at a time where if you can think in obvious and non-obvious ways, package your insights into intellectual capital, and turn that intellectual capital into digital products and services, you have the ability to create abundance, right? You have the ability to create breakthroughs for people.

Mm-hmm.

You have the ability to scale in how you make a difference. Our podcasts are downloaded in 190 countries. 3 days ago on LinkedIn, I got a note from a gal in Cameroon who just finished Snow Leopard, and she wanted to tell me all about the unlock that it was for her.

That's amazing.

And so if you understand the content pyramid, and it's not just content, it's really thinking. And that you can take radically different, non-obvious and obvious intellectual capital and consider yourself what we call an intellectual capitalist and codify and scale that intellectual capital in digital products and services. Your ability to create agency for yourself, to create economic outcomes for yourself and your family, to contribute to others, and to create whole new categories of the way we live, work, and play. There has never been a better time in history than right now.

I agree.

And so the thing that I am excited about is that. And what I'd say about that is I think we're in a cocoon time and that the world needs those of us who have the courage to be different, who understand some of these big things that are happening, who can take advantage of them and make contributions and make a difference at scale. And now is the time for those people.

And if people want to check it out, the podcast is Follow Your Different, one of my favorite shows. Book is Snow Leopard. Uh, thank you so much for coming on, Chris. This was wonderful. And thank you for also always just being supportive. Uh, when I launched my show, you were one of the first ones to reach out and be like, Come as a guest. Uh, we've had so many offline conversations, but— and thank you for staying longer. This was amazing.

My pleasure. Bless you, Sachit. Keep doing what you do. The world needs you too. Thank you.