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Today marks the 300th episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. And who better to have a dialogue with on this episode than one of our very first guests in the podcast, the amazing Dushka Zapata.

Dushka Zapata is a regular here on the podcast, and is one of my absolute favorite people in the world. She’s the author of many legendary books. Her most recent is called How to Write a Book: or tackle anything you find daunting, which is part of the How to be Ferociously Happy series. When she’s not writing, she has had an extraordinary career as a PR communications executive and coach.

A Period of Creativity

The dialogue starts off with a reversal of roles, as Dushka asks Christopher about how he has been, and congratulating him on his most recent works.

Christopher attributes it to having partners in the craft in Eddie Yoon and Nicolas Cole. He feels grateful that he has been able to work with both in what he refers to as his “business writing band”.

“I think in my case, on the writing side with Cole and with Eddie, when you have partners, we sort of feel like a band. We call ourselves a business writing band, in so far as we’ve committed to do work together for years, and do meaningful work over a meaningful amount of time. And while the three of us have other interests and do other things, we do the vast majority of our writing together. So what being in a creative band means is the quality of the work changes radically.”

– Christopher Lochhead

Christopher adds that while they have overlapping interests, they also each have expertise in other areas, which allows for a multiple perspective on what they write, and can reach out and connect to different audiences.

Creativity as a Way to Connect with Yourself

On the topic of connecting to people, Dushka shares that creativity in a way has a purpose of connecting you more with yourself. She also finds it wonderful that while you are doing so, other people can join you on that path of self-connection.

“I feel like being connected to the part of me that creates, which in my case is mostly writing. But it can be anything. Creativity can be baking, or raising a child or anything that creates something from nothing. But I think it’s us at our most us.”

– Dushka Zapata

Writing as a Superpower

It usually is the case for people who create is that the more they get older, the less they create. Though it does not seem like it for Dushka, as she continues to write and share new things enthusiastically as time goes on.

For Duskha, she feels like she has even become more creative as she grew older. Because for her, it’s something that she genuinely enjoys doing.

“My relationship with writing is idyllic. I have heard great writers like Hemmingway say that you have to bleed at the keyboard. And I have never associated writing with anything that hurts. I have never felt frustrated with it. Or I’ve never experienced writer’s block. I’ve never felt that I have to suffer at the keyboard or with my pencil. It’s just pure joy. It always has been.”

– Dushka Zapata

To hear more from this amazing dialogue with Dushka Zapata, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

After working for more than 20 years in the communications industry, Dushka noticed a theme.

People find it very difficult to articulate who they are and what they do.

This holds true for both companies and for individuals.

For companies, this is an impediment to the development of an identity, a reputation, a brand.

It makes it hard for customers to see how companies are different from their competitors.

For individuals, in a new world order of personal brands, it makes it hard to develop one that feels real.

This is the focus of Dushka’s work: she helps companies and people put into simple terms who they are, what they do, and where to go next.

Her work comes to life through message development, presentation training, media training and personal brand development.

It comes to life through executive coaching, workshops and public speaking.

It comes to life through what she writes.

Dushka has written ten bestseller.

Her work has been consumed on Q&A site Qoura 180M times.

Links

Connect with Dushka Zapata!

Amazon Authors | Quora | LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Given recent events in the world of Cryptocurrency, almost everyone in business is currently pondering the following question: Is Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of the crypto exchange FTX, the Bernie Madoff of Crypto? Or is he merely an entrepreneur who made some horrible errors? Today at Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we are joined by the legendary Jim Campbell to examine this question.

Jim Campbell is the author of the bestselling definitive book on Bernie Madoff called Madoff Talks. We did a deep dive with him on the book and on the topic of Madoff himself. Check it out if you’re interested in how Madoff manipulated everything before it all fell apart (FYD 217).

On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we go deep with Jim Campbell on the similarities and the differences on old school scammers like Bernie Madoff and the disaster that is Sam Bankman-Fried and the fate of FTX.

Jim Campbell on Sam Bankman-Fried: Madoff 2.0 or not?

The dialogue starts off direct to the point: is Sam Bankman-Fried Madoff 2.0?

Jim responds that there are similarities but also differences between the two. The biggest similarities is that both Madoff and Bankman-Fried comingled their firm and customer assets to boost the value of its company, with Bankman going so far as to use said money to create more connections in the tech, business, and even so far as government and politics.

Both were also involved in something like a Ponzi scheme, though FTX allegedly took it a step further by using its own FTX tokens as collateral to further increase its own valuation, which is a form of market manipulation.

The baffling behavior of Sam Bankman-Fried

When you are accused of a crime as big as the one Sam Bankman-Fried is currently facing, it’s normal to avoid the public eye for a while, and make no statements unless in the presence of their lawyer, lest they say something incriminating.

Which is why Sam Bankman-Fried’s behavior baffles everyone, as he goes so far as guest for certain podcasts and interviews. Yet he still had the arrogance and audacity to say that he didn’t know what he has done would result in a loss of $32 billion dollars for their investors and consumers.

Jim Campbell on doing your due diligence

The thing is, there were a lot of questionable aspects to FTX, once you dug into their model. Unfortunately, doing the due diligence seems to be a rare thing nowadays, due to the fear of missing out. With the boom of crypto in the latter half of the 2010s and even more so during the pandemic, investors wanted to hop it to latest coin or token, should it increase in value exponentially like what happened to Bitcoin.

Some tech companies and businesses are also guilty in this regard. Take for example on what happened to Theranos. Businesses were so eager to jump in even with just a concept, because they think it’ll be more expensive to establish connections and partnerships later on. Some were dazzled by the names attached to the concept, others by the “projected” earnings should it be developed. In the end, they all lost their investments because they couldn’t be bothered to do their due diligence beforehand.

To hear more from Jim Campbell, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Jim Campbell is the host of the nationally syndicated radio show Business Talk with Jim Campbell. He is known for his hard-hitting interviews of leading figures from the worlds of business, politics, and sports.

Known for “firsts,” Campbell snagged the first extensive interview with former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer after his resignation, the first interview with former Tyco CEO Denis Kozlowski after his release from prison, and the first broadcast interview with former stock analyst Roomy Kahn, a government informant in one of the biggest insider trading busts in American history.

Campbell’s extensive corporate, consulting, and entrepreneurial business background includes roles at KPMG Consulting, Dean Witter Financial Services (now Morgan Stanley), and IBM. He is founder and president of JC Ventures, Inc., a management consulting business.

Links

LinkedIn: in/JimCampbell

Book: Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History

More about Bernie Madoff and Madoff Talks:

Wall Street Journal: Bernie Madoff Dead at 82

CNBC: Bernie Madoff dies, Mastermind of the Nation’s Biggest Investment Fraud

More about Sam Bankman-Fried:

Exclusive: SBF secretly funded crypto news site

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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Plato once said that Necessity is the mother of Invention. This could not be anymore true with Category Design, and for our guest today, Mike Evans.

Mike Evans is the founder of Grubhub, a category in food delivery service that was born from the necessity of having a multitude of options in one app, rather than having to look for it in different websites or printed pamphlets. From a budding delivery guide, Mike grew his company into a premier delivery ordering platform, and became Category King in this regard.

On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we go through Mike Evans’ journey, from the spark of the idea to managing a successful startup and beyond.

Mike Evans on the inception of Grubhub

The conversation starts off with Mike sharing how their love for great food made them a big fan of ordering.

“I live in a household with a woman who loves to cook. Because we like to eat, sometimes we don’t feel like cooking. And when I say we, I mean her – I helped mildly. And maybe it’s because we’re getting a little older or whatever, sometimes you just don’t feel like the rigmarole of going out to a restaurant and sitting down and that. And there’s this magical ability to press a button on your Star Trek communicator and have a very nice person show up at your house with some very warm food from one of your favorite local restaurants. It’s a fucking miracle.”

– Mike Evans

Grubhub came at a time that the home internet is still finding its foothold in everyone’s household, and is one of the first few apps you’ll find in the App Store.

Necessity brings Innovation

But as the idea might seem like a simple one nowadays, it’s surprising that we haven’t thought of it sooner, even as a simple website or catalog.

Of course, there was the yellow pages, but it’s not like there’s a dedicated section there for restaurants, and the numbers aren’t always updated. And you still have to resort to pamphlets to find out what’s on the menu, so can be quite redundant.

“I just wanted to find who delivered to me, and the Yellow Pages was a terrible, a terrible way to organize that information. It was just alphabetical sorted for the whole city and Chicago is 25 miles tall and 3 miles wide. And so the restaurants that deliver to the White Sox area, don’t deliver to the cubby area. Not useful to see it in a in a big Yellow Pages book. And so that was the original idea.”

– Mike Evans

While there were some restaurants that were doing online ordering at the time, it wasn’t what Mike has originally had in mind. He just wanted to have the location and contact details of a restaurant, as well as and updated menu of what they offer. Eventually they would expand Grubhub to be an ordering platform as well, but that’s a few years down the road.

Mike Evans: Content comes first

Now that he has the idea for it, the next step was creating the business and driving traffic into it. Mike Evans explains that the common trap among starting business that bridge two markets together is that they often cater to just one end or the other.

According to Mike, before you even get to any side of the market, you first need to create great content for your business. In his case, he built out the online menu guide first for high-traffic restaurants before marketing it to potential users and showing restaurant owners that it is a viable product.

He basically found a way to get value on his business that doesn’t depend on either side of the network to start.

Mike also commented that there’s a common misconception that you have to be the first in order to corner a big chunk of the market. For him, being the First Best is important, as you will be used and remember much better this way by users, rather just having a clunky business model that happened to come out first.

To hear more from Mike Evans and his startup journey, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Mike Evans founded GrubHub in his spare bedroom and grew it into the multi-billion-dollar online food delivery colossus that is a household name.

In Hangry, his insightful and hilarious memoir, he reveals the inside story of how a pizza craving turned into a hobby, and then became a business, and then ultimately grew into a multi-billion-dollar behemoth that changed the way we eat.

Shocking everyone, at the pinnacle of startup success, Mike leaves it all behind, quitting the company he started to bike across the United States.

Links

Connect with Mike Evans!

Mike’s Website | Linkedin | Twitter | Instagram | Hangry on Amazon Books

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

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On almost every episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we strive to provide radically valuable, radically different real dialogues that hopefully make a big difference. Today, we aspire to do none of that. Because what you’re about to hear is a fun funny ADHD conversation with our guest, my buddy and Santa Cruz icon, Neil Pearlberg.

So sit back and listen to two buddies have a conversation while the cocktail flows and the better judgment goes out of the window.

Neil Pearlberg On podcast high jinks and Cameo

The conversation begins with some light-hearted ribbing about podcasting, and how they don’t get together often anymore unless there’s a podcast. There’s also a couple of stories about their previous attempts and always having an issue every time they do so.

Afterwards, Christopher brings up the idea of Cameo, and maybe hiring someone to do audiobook readings of their Category Pirates mini books. They muse if UFC fighters could be good audio books readers, and also wonder how much they would charge if they set up their own Cameo.

Neil Pearlberg on high-profile guests to the podcast

The conversation then shifts to the past guests they’ve had on their respective podcasts, particularly the higher-profiled ones.

Neil recalls the time when he had Jimmy Panetta on as his guest, back when he was still a District Attorney and was running for Congress. He remembered how nervous he was and how he wanted to ask great questions rather than the usual ones they dish out at interviews.

So as Neil’s interview winds down and he is down, to his last question, he decides to take a chance.

“So at the end of my 10 questions. I’m like, fuck it, I’m just gonna ask the guy. Because I know he’s gonna say No, and I’m not afraid of the word No.

So I said, “Mr. Panetta, What could you tell me? What it was like to be in the situation room with you and Obama went off to bin Laden? Can you describe to me that process?” I’m thinking, “Fuck no. Hey, that’s top secret”, you know?

He answers, “Do you have half an hour?” Yes, sir. I do. And he told that story about the whole thing with the three helicopters and that black ops and Navy Seals and the whole thing was badass. was pretty cool.”

– Neil Pearlberg

Getting Banned on Twitter

Christopher then talks about Twitter, and given its recent trends, how he got suspended for the most ridiculous reasons.

One of his suspensions was from an offensive Covid tweet, where he sarcastically replies that Bill Gates has a farm that puts Covid on 5G towers (a weird conspiracy hoax perpetuated at the time). Unfortunately, Twitter customer service bots can’t detect sarcasm, and he was suspended the next day, although he got immediately reinstated once he deleted the tweet.

Though given the current trend, getting banned or suspended on Twitter is almost a badge of honor for some, especially if their ban came from the most ridiculous or offhand reason. Which is sad, because despite its flaws, Twitter remains one of the few places were people could have an open discourse, provided it is executed properly.

To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and Neil Pearlberg, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Since September 2009, Neil Pearlberg has written over 200 articles covering the sport of surfing, as well as skateboarding, and soccer, for the Bay Area News Group, & Santa Cruz Waves.

He is also the host of the “Off the Lip Radio Show”, & Hour Local Radio Show aired on Santa Cruz Radio Show KSCO AM 1080, FM 104.1, ksco.com and streamed on Santa Cruz Waves Facebook Page.

Neil has also published articles in Adventure Sports Journal, National Geographic, Stand Up Paddle Board Magazine.

Links

Connect with Neil Pearlberg!

Off the Lip Radio | Instagram | Twitter | Linkedin

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and subscribe on iTunes!

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On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we go deep with one of my favorite people in Silicon Valley, Bruce Cleveland.

Bruce Cleveland has had a career in Silicon Valley for over 40 years. And he’s pretty much done it with building companies, technologies, categories, and brands, as well as working on and with some of Silicon Valley’s best executive teams and entrepreneurs. He’s been a successful investor.

He’s also a bestselling author. In fact, one of my favorite books is Traversing the Traction Gap, which he wrote. And I recommend it to all entrepreneurs.

By the end of this dialogue, we hope you’ll have gained radical new insights into how you can do legendary things in your life and career.

Traversing the Traction Gap

The conversation begins with a discussion of Bruce Cleveland’s book, Traversing the Traction Gap. His best-selling book was praised by Silicon Valley insiders and many entrepreneurs for the information and insights it provided.

Bruce shares that his reason for writing the books stems from people trying to make VC seem like a mystical thing, rather than explaining things in a clear way.

“The reason I wrote it was because I began to grow pretty weary of really, really smart people not making it. Their companies not surviving for a variety of reasons. And they all tended to be pattern-matched against those reasons. I was also not happy with the venture community in its entirety, because I don’t think it was honest with a lot of these entrepreneurs as to why they weren’t getting investments, etc. And I kind of wanted to demystify those issues.”

– Bruce Cleveland

Bruce Cleveland on helping out entrepreneurs

Another reason Bruce gives for writing out the book is that he wanted to help out fellow entrepreneurs who may be feeling lost, or guide those who are doing well into things that could make their ventures better.

“The purpose and objective of this book was to share with entrepreneurs that, “hey, here’s some things you could possibly do to significantly enhance the probability of success.”

You know, we only get one shot at this life, I felt like I owed it back to the entrepreneurs of the world who take all the risk as to what I saw, from my vantage point, both as an operating exec and as an investor, to why I thought things weren’t working for the vast majority of startups.”

– Bruce Cleveland

C3.ai and Enterprise AI

The conversation then goes to Bruce’s latest ventures into category creation. Together with Tom Siebel, they founded C3.ai, which delves into enterprise AI.

Bruce then talks about how it came to be, and how working on C3.ai has been so far.

“I think this is one of the benefits of having a CEO who understands and believes in category creation, is that it as your job as CMO becomes much easier to do.”

– Bruce Cleveland

When they started conceptualizing and creating the category of enterprise AI, the term wasn’t even on the radar. While there were companies who were doing something similar to a lesser degree, it wasn’t clearly defined, and no one was pursuing rapid advancement on it.

Now, it’s something that a lot of companies are looking at, and C3.ai is at the forefront of it.

To hear more from Bruce Cleveland and how to have a legendary career in VC and tech, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Bruce Cleveland’s career in Tech spans more than 40 years as a venture investor and operating executive.

He was a first investor and a board member of Marketo, which held an IPO in 2013 and was acquired in 2018 by Adobe for $4.75B.

He was an early-stage investor in other notable companies such as C3.ai, Doximity, Vlocity, and Workday. Bruce also held senior executive roles in engineering, product management and product marketing at Apple, AT&T, C3.ai, Oracle and Siebel Systems.

His book, Traversing the Traction Gap, is a prescriptive guide for startups and new product initiatives within larger companies helping teams to use ‘market engineering’ techniques to successfully transition from Ideation to Scale.

He attended the US Military Academy, West Point, New York, and received a BS in business administration from CSU, Sacramento. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Connect with Bruce Cleveland!

LinkedIn | Twitter | Website

Check out his book here: Traversing the Traction Gap

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!