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US President Joe Biden recently warned about the possibility of Armageddon. He said “we have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we discuss the current situation in the US and around the world with All In Podcast Rain Man, David Sacks.

David Sacks is a legendary entrepreneur, category and company builder, and now venture capitalist. He’s the founder of a VC firm called Craft Ventures. He was the founding Chief Operating Officer of PayPal founder and CEO of Yammer, which sold to Microsoft for well over a billion dollars. He has been an early investor in companies like Facebook, Twitter, Uber, SpaceX, Airbnb, Slack, and more. And today, he’s also incredibly well known as one of the CO hosts of the All In podcast.

So listen in to keep up with current affairs, and you might learn a thing or two on how to prepare for the future.

David Sacks on Biden’s comment about Armageddon

We begin on the recent comments that Biden made about Armageddon. When asked why he thinks Biden’s thoughts went that way, David’s reply was:

“My reaction to this was the man who can’t see two steps ahead, suddenly realizes where his policy is leading. We’re the ones who have refused to engage in any sort of diplomacy or any sort of negotiated settlement. Our strategy is not to provide them with an off ramp.” – David Sacks

But David also thinks that Biden acknowledging this is a step in the right direction.

“That being said, I still thought it was incredibly useful for Biden to say what he said, because the first step of getting out of a problem is acknowledging that you’re in one.” – David Sacks

David Sacks on Tactical Nukes & Risking Nuclear War

There has also been talks of using tactical nukes to quickly resolve the situation. David does not agree with this, saying that using nukes at this point just opens up the risk of a nuclear war.

“If a tactical nuclear weapon gets used in Ukraine, then the whole world will be different. This thing could escalate very quickly into a larger scale nuclear war.

You had Petraeus on the Sunday shows last weekend saying that if Putin uses attack nukes, the US should respond by hitting every Russian military target in Ukraine? Well, again, think two steps ahead. How do you think the Russians would react to that, given that they clearly don’t have the military might to stand up to the US in terms of conventional arms?” – David Sacks

If countries start using nukes, then it signals that the former agreements against it can be violated with impunity. And that is a dangerous ground to tread.

Prediction or Deterrent

Returning to Biden’s statement about Armageddon, David suggests that, rather than being a prediction, this statement, along with Petreaus’, could be interpreted as a warning or deterrent against Russia going nuclear.

The problem is that the reasons why the Russians might escalate to the use of nuclear weapons is because they’re losing the war by conventional means. Add to the fact that Putin doesn’t have an off ramp that lets him keep his reign. Because if he loses this war, or doesn’t gain anything significant from it, it is very likely that he will be forced out of office by the public.

Putin is pretty much acting like a cornered beast at this point. The scary part is that you don’t know what that cornered beast might do as a last-ditch effort to escape.

To hear more from David Sacks and the current situation of the world, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

David Sacks is co-founder and general partner at Craft. He has been a successful founder and investor for over two decades, building and investing in some of the most iconic companies in tech. He has invested in over 20 unicorns, including Affirm, AirBnB, Bird, ClickUp, Eventbrite, Facebook, Houzz, Lyft, OpenDoor, Palantir, Postmates, Reddit, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber, and Wish.

David is also co-host of the popular “All-In Podcast” with Chamath Palihapitiya, David Friedberg, and Jason Calacanis.

David first got involved in the technology industry in 1999 when he joined early-stage startup Confinity, later renamed PayPal. Serving as the company’s first product leader and then as COO, David built and ran many of the company’s key teams, including product management and design, sales and marketing, business development, international, customer service, fraud operations, and HR. He pivoted the product from beaming money on Palm Pilots to emailing money on the web, and introduced the business model. When the company IPO’d on the Nasdaq in 2002, David was 29 — the median age of the “PayPal Mafia” executives listed on the S-1. PayPal was later acquired by eBay and eventually spun back out into a publicly traded company (under ticker symbol PYPL).

In 2008, David founded enterprise collaboration company Yammer, which was one of the first SaaS startups to apply consumer growth tactics to enterprise software. Yammer’s viral approach made it one of the fastest-growing SaaS startups in history, exceeding eight million enterprise users in just four years. As Founder/CEO of Yammer, David grew the company to roughly $60 million in sales and 500 employees. In July 2012, Microsoft acquired Yammer for $1.2 billion. It remains one of the fastest unicorn exits in SaaS.

Since Yammer, David has continued to be involved in the SaaS world, with an emphasis on “Bottom Up SaaS,” the strategy he pioneered at Yammer by combining product-led growth with B2B sales. Bottom-up SaaS companies combine the growth potential of B2C with the enterprise budgets of B2B, leading to explosive outcomes when ARR goes viral.

David is well known in Silicon Valley for his product acumen. AngelList’s Naval Ravikant has called David “the world’s best product strategist.” David likes to begin pitch meetings by seeing a product demo.

Links

Connect with David Sacks

Website | Bottom Up | All In Podcast | Twitter | LinkedIn

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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Most people want to be welcoming of others and believe in equality for all human beings. But we’re all a little biased. On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we go deep on the topic of bias with our guest, Jessica Nordell.

Jessica Nordell is a bestselling author who has written a book called The End of Bias. Jessica’s book has won a boatload of awards, including being named a Best Book of the Year by the World Economic Forum.

What you’re about to experience is a real different dialogue about what it really takes to end bias.

Jessica Nordell on Bias and Racism

The conversation starts off on the topic of Bias, and how it relates to racism.

Christopher asks if racism and bias served a purpose for humanity or not, to which Jessica replies:

“Racism certainly emerged because it had a very specific social, political and economic purpose, which was to enable the existence of chattel slavery. In order to justify and sort of perpetuate the existence of that inhumane practice, what we would look at now as a criminal, criminally inhumane enterprise, Racism had to exist as a as a way to justify it. Because if a group of people are seen as lower on a social hierarchy, then it’s much easier to justify that kind of inhumane behavior.” – Jessica Nordell

Jessica Nordell on the Origin of Racism

Following up on the topic, Jessica was asked if these ideas of being superior over a certain race or gender started existing after a certain period, or did humanity have these notions from the start.

Jessica explains that this particular question was one of the things she really dug into in her research for her book, The End of Bias.

One of the things she found was that in ancient Egyptian civilization, there was no notion of skin color prejudice. There were even evidence of non-ethic people rising on the Egyptian political administration, which suggests a high intermingling of people in the region.

This suggests that contemporary racism was invented at a certain point in time for a specific purpose.

Jessica Nordell on Male-Female Bias

When asked if it was the same for Male & Female biases, Jessica shares that Patriarchy predates the written word, which means the position of men above women is a really old school of thought.

But there have been civilizations and ethnicities that flip that over its head. For example, in ancient Mesopotamia women are associated with divinity. There was a sense of women being associated with authority and leadership, which has eroded over time.

So it’s hard to find the origin of Patriarchy, because by the time we have writing, it was already there, and men were doing the writing.

To hear more from Jessica Nordell and what it takes to actually end bias, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Jessica Nordell is an award-winning author, science writer, and speaker known for blending rigorous science with compassionate humanity.

Her first book, The End of Bias: A Beginning, shortlisted for the 2022 Columbia Journalism/Lukas Prize for Excellence in Nonfiction, the 2022 NYPL Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the 2021 Royal Society Science Book Prize, is the culmination of fifteen years of reporting and writing on the subject of bias and discrimination and how to solve it, for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the New Republic.

The End of Bias was named a Best Book of the Year by the World Economic Forum, Greater Good, AARP, and Inc and is currently being used by organizations from newsrooms and startups to universities, healthcare organizations, and faith communities to solve some of their biggest cultural challenges.

Deeply engaged with connecting across differences to expand and heal the human experience, Nordell’s own early-career experience with workplace bias inspired her passion for tackling discrimination and for seeing others in their full complexity and humanity.

With degrees in physics from Harvard and poetry from the University of Wisconsin, Nordell undertakes pioneering collaborations across disciplines; her work with computer scientists to simulate the real-world impact of workplace bias became a 2021 viral NYT story. Nordell is the recipient of a Gracie Award from American Women in Radio and Television, was named a Best New Poet by Tracy K. Smith, and was a 2022 featured speaker at SXSW. She is a direct descendent of the last woman to be tried for witchcraft in the state of Massachusetts, and is an amateur rock drummer.

Links

Connect with Jessica Nordell!

Website | Twitter | Instagram

Read her book: The End of Bias

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 this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we talk about something that every single one of us has, very few of us think or talk about, and it’s something that can have a profound impact on our lives. So let’s talk about Secrets with our guest, Michael Slepian.

Michael Slepian is an Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics at the legendary Columbia University. He’s also a recipient of the Rising Star Award from the Association of psychological science. Michael is considered by many to be the leading expert on the Psychology of Secrets.

He’s got a brand-new best seller out called The Secret Life of Secrets, which we will get into this episode and much more.

Michael Slepian on Secrets

The conversation starts out on secrets, and how we all keep them. As to why we have secrets, Michael was asked if there were pros and cons in keeping secrets from people.

“So the pros, you are protecting something, you might be protecting your reputation. And in your own mind, you might be protecting someone’s feelings, you might be protecting a relationship with someone. Whatever you think is the outcome of people learning about this thing, you’re preventing that.” – Michael Slepian

But to keep a secret means you are essentially cutting yourself off from other people, so they couldn’t share your burdens or provide emotional support if that is part of what you are keeping your secret from.

“You’re blocking yourself from the availability of getting help from others. You can’t get their emotional support; you can’t get their guidance and advice.” – Michael Slepian

Why We Keep Secrets

One reason that we keep secrets is that we often feel ashamed of those secret. In response, we bury it deep and isolate it from the public, so no one will know.

But this process of isolation also keeps it from receiving any validation if the secret is something to be actually ashamed of, or something that one only thought would be unacceptable.

“We’ll feel isolated with those secrets, we’ll feel inauthentic for keeping them and uncertain that we’re doing the right thing. But all these negative feelings are tempered easily when we start talking to people and getting the help that we need.” – Michael Slepian

Having Secrets is Natural

Michael further explains that having secrets is normal, and that people tend to keep the same secrets. On his research that shows 38 common categories of secrets, an average person has 13 secrets that fall on that list, and 97% of people would have more than one secret that is in that list.

“We all keep the same kinds of secrets. As isolating as a secret can feel, we all have similar ones. And so we’re not alone in the secrets we have.” – Michael Slepian

To hear more from Michael Slepian and the secret about Secrets, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Michael Slepian is the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia University.

A recipient of the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, he is the leading expert on the psychology of secrets. Slepian has authored more than fifty articles on secrecy, truth, and deception.

His research has been covered by The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, NPR, and more.

Links

Connect with Michael Slepian!

Website | Twitter | LinkedIn | Columbia bio

Check out his new book: The Secret Life of Secrets

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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It is said that the people who have the most legendary careers are what you might think of as other-directed. The key to a successful life is to remove your joy blockers, and the goal of a career should be to, as Warren Buffett says, dance your way to work. We talk about all these and more on Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different with our guest David Novak.

David Novak is the co-founder and was the CEO for 17 years of the legendary Yum! brands. Yum! is the world’s largest restaurant company, which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, and many others. David also has an amazing podcast called How Leaders Lead, and a new book called Take Charge of You: how self-coaching can transform your life and your career.

Learn how be a legendary leader, executive, and entrepreneur from the best by listening in to this episode.

David Novak on Looking Back on his Career

The conversation begins with David’s new book, and how it is a window to his career and life, and the interesting events and tidbits that go along with it.

“I was the first kid in my family to get a college education, got a degree in journalism, didn’t get an MBA, ended up becoming a CEO, and have the time of my life building a fantastic company. Now I’m in my next phase of my life where I’m fortunate enough to be able to spend time on the things that truly give me joy.” – David Novak

Nowadays, David focuses on Leadership Development, and shares his thoughts and insights in his podcast, How Leaders Lead by David Novak. He also has time to write books, which has been a big passion of his.

David Novak on Reaching One’s Goals and What Comes After

The topic shifts on how most of the books and guides in entrepreneurship that is published are focused on personal growth and development, but there are only a few on what happens when you achieve those goals. Because life doesn’t stop when you reach those goals – there has to be something else to direct your passion into.

David agrees and adds to it that after proving yourself and learning to manage and eventually lead people, the goal post shifts ever so slightly, and you find other ways to draw success.

“Well, I have to tell you, that a lot of the research out there says that, you know, the people that are the happiest are other directed. What I’ve found is that the more other directed I got, the more I focused on other people’s success more than my own, the more success I ultimately got. And, you know, it’s kind of an amazing thing.” – David Novak

On the Current State and Rising Up Again

The conversation then goes to the current state of things, where inflation and the looming threat of recession is on the rise. David comments that there is current a huge divide, particularly in the haves and have nots, especially in the environment that they are in.

That is not to say that there aren’t any people who thrive in harsher environments, but David wishes that people would at least have the chance to nurture themselves and grow.

“I hope one day, my goal is somehow from all the leadership development I do that there’ll be one person that will rise up in this country and inspire people again.” – David Novak

To hear more from David Novak and how you can take charge of you, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

David Novak, Founder/former CEO Yum! Brands & NY Times Bestselling Author

Starting with an undergrad degree in Journalism from the University of Missouri, David grew from his first job as a copywriter at a small ad agency to become a New York Times best-selling author, co-founder and former CEO and Chairman of Yum! Brands, the world’s largest restaurant company (KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut), and now, founder of the non-profit organization, David Novak Leadership, Inc. and host of top-rated leadership podcast, How Leaders Lead with David Novak.

David was named “CEO of the Year” by Chief Executive magazine, one of the world’s “30 Best CEOs” by Barron’s, one of the “Top People in Business” by FORTUNE and one of the “100 Best-Performing CEOs in the World” by Harvard Business Review. And he’s passed it on. Today, there are over 26 CEOs of major American corporations that David has coached or led earlier in their careers.

Links

Connect with David Novak!

LinkedIn | Podcast | Twitter

How Leaders Lead | How Leaders Lead – Twitter

Read the book: Take Charge of You

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 this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we talk about the idea of startup capital, how to have an exponential career, and maybe even a new way to think about the future with our guest, Mike Maples, Jr.

Mike Maples, Jr. is the co-founder of Floodgate Capital. Floodgate has led early-stage investments in companies like Twitter, Lyft, and much more. His podcast, Starting Greatness, is truly one of the greatest business podcasts there is.

That said, let’s get into the discussion of how to think about the future.

From Value Creators to Rent Seekers

Mike Maples, Jr. dives into the idea of the industries and business leader’s mindset and drive for creating new ideas or the lack thereof.

At the time when the animating forces behind industrial economy was mass production, mass distribution, and eventually mass computation, the focus in new technology and ideas revolved around improving performance. Over time, it evolved into developing networks, whether physical or via software, and value was derived on how vast your network reached.

Fast forward to recent years, in which Mike started noticing that there was a disconnect with most of the ideas from the founder of a company, to its current inheritors. A lot of them are starting to focus on creating a status quo, rather than moving forward. As a result, a lot of people in business make money through financial engineering rather than things that improve productivity.

“They’ve transition from being value creators to rent seekers. And they’ve started to become more interested in preserving their institutional power than in fulfilling their mission to their constituents.” – Mike Maples, Jr.

Mike Maples, Jr. on Nurturing an Economy that Rewards Productivity

According to Mike, the issue nowadays is that people make money from the market without creating new ideas, and are incentivized to do it in the current financial economy. In order to become a successful society, we need to incentivize productive behaviors to move forward.

“So hedge fund guy borrows money close to 0%, and then buys IBM stock or loans at IBM so they can buy back their own stock. And since they know they’re gonna do that they front run it. And so Okay, did any jobs get created in that? No. Did any new products get created in that? No. But people who played financial engineering games did well. And what you want is an economy that is not financialized. You want an economy that rewards productivity gains, because fundamentally all abundance and standard of living advancement comes from people being more productive.” – Mike Maples, Jr.

Engaging in fakery and keeping this charade of an economy will just lead to a cycle of economic bubbles and bursts in the future.

Startup Capitalism

If the current system won’t lend itself to shifting back to a productive economy, then the third option is to exit. Though it was not as feasible before as it is now, Bitcoin and other non-Fiat currencies have given us the chance to break free and start over, without being tied down by Fiat economies.

That said, Mike has been playing around the idea of a Startup Capitalism. As with most startups, they focus on creating a different future than just following the current flow of things. Which is why startups are born from the pursuit of new ideas, and could be the drive to a more productive economy that Mike wanted.

And you don’t necessarily need to start a new company to create a startup. It could be born inside a bigger one, much like the iPhone inside Apple.

“At the very least, you get to exercise the option of doing things in a different way. “– Mike Maples, Jr.

To hear more from Mike Maples, Jr. and his ideas on how to Rethink the Future, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Mike Maples, Jr. is the Co-Founder and Partner at Floodgate, the host of the Starting Greatness podcast and a Co-conspirator with awesome Startup Founders.

Links

Connect with Mike!

Website: Floodgate |Twitter: @m2jr | LinkedIn: in/Maples | Podcast: Starting Greatness

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 this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, our guests Lauren Dunford and Kevin Maney discuss how Category Designers work to create the future. On this topic, we also talk about how do you create a company that makes a difference and makes money at the same time.

Lauren Dunford is the cofounder and CEO of an extraordinarily exciting new company called Guidewheel. They are a mission to empower all the world’s factories to reach sustainable peak performance.

Kevin Maney is a legendary bestselling author and award-winning columnist. He’s also the co-founder of Category Design Advisors, where he helps companies create and dominate new market categories. He is also one of the co-authors of Play Bigger, and one of the Godfathers of Category Design.

If you care about building companies that changed the future, I think you’re gonna love everything about this episode.

Lauren Dunford and Kevin Maney on Category Design

The conversation starts off with an explanation on how Lauren Dunford and Kevin Maney met, and the work they have done together on category design.

Kevin knows Lauren from the work they have done on the category design project on Lauren’s company, Guidewheel. Kevin was really interested with Lauren’s work, as he explained:

“There are actually two tracks of reasons that I very interested in Lauren, and her company guide wheel and one is the category design aspect, which I feel like was a very exciting project. But then also, there’s another track of the book that I wrote that came out earlier this year called Intended Consequences.

The idea behind that book was that there’s been lots of conversation out there about responsible innovation and how a company’s ESG had companies to do good and everything. And hang on. And we were talking about the fact that there wasn’t really a real playbook for like, if you wanted to start a company that was like this.” – Kevin Maney

As he was writing the book, Kevin realized that a lot of conversations he had with Lauren Dunford line up with the ideas that they were talking about in the book; mainly how to setup a company that from the beginning, will be a company that is profitable and does something really good.

Lauren Dunford on Guidewheel

We then pivot to a discussion on Lauren’s company, Guidewheel, and the work they are doing to make the business a force for good.

Lauren and her co-founder were undergrads in Stanford, where they ran competing climate change groups. Afterwards, they consolidated their efforts and aimed to create a profitable business objective that still had a massive impact on climate change.

“We work with factories, and the category we’re building is Factory Ops. Our goal is let’s have all of the world’s 10 million factories, having the tools to reach sustainable peak performance, if we can do that at scale huge for their businesses. And then, of course, your massive impact for the planet because of how much emissions results from how we make those guitars and everything else on the planet.” – Lauren Dunford

Lauren describes the category of Factory Ops as making the tools of the biggest factories run efficiently, so there are less waste and by-products. This in turn meant that companies will have the same, if not more, output while contributing less to factors that cause climate change.

To hear more from Lauren Dunford and Kevin Maney on how to create a company that makes a difference and makes money at the same time, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Lauren Dunford

Lauren Dunford is the co-founder and CEO of Guidewheel, on a mission to empower all the world’s factories to reach sustainable peak performance and recognized by the World Economic Forum as one of the 100 most promising companies globally poised to have a significant impact on business and society.

Kevin Maney

Kevin Maney is a bestselling author and award-winning columnist. He’s also the co-founder of Category Design Advisors where he helps companies create and dominate new market categories.

He has been writing about technology for 30 years, has interviewed most of the tech pioneers you can name, and brings broad and deep context to Category Design conversations.

He is co-author of the book Play Bigger, and has been an A-list writer and thinker about technology for 25 years.

Kevin’s most recent book is UnHealthcare: A Manifesto for Health Assurance, which proposes a new category of healthcare. It is co-authored with Hemant Taneja of General Catalyst and Stephen Klasko, CEO of Jefferson Health.

Kevin and Hemant also co-authored the 2018 book Unscaled: How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future.

His other books include The Two-Second Advantage (a 2011 New York Times best seller), Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On and Others Don’t, and The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Making of IBM.

Kevin wrote a regular column for Newsweek, and has been a contributor to Fortune, The Atlantic, Fast Company and ABC News, among other media outlets. He was a contributing editor at Conde Nast Portfolio and for 22 years, Kevin was a columnist, editor and reporter at USA Today.

Links

Connect with Lauren Dunford!

Guidewheel | LinkedIn | Twitter

Connect with Kevin Maney!

Category Design Advisors | LinkedIn | Twitter

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 this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, our guest Al Ramadan talks about what’s at stake when it comes to category battles, how you can spot the category challengers who can become category kings and queens, and what they need to become category leaders that earn 76% of the economics.

There comes a time in every startup’s life, where they face an epic, typically 18-to-36-month category battle. As we reported in our first book Play Bigger, the company that wins that battle earns 76% of the total value created in the category as measured by the market caps for public companies and valuations for private companies. What that means is, in any space, one company earns two thirds of the economics, which makes that category battle, which is typically 18 to 36 months long, arguably the highest stakes game in business.

This episode will be available on both Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different and Lochhead on Marketing, because we think it is that important that everyone must hear about it. So without further ado, let’s dive into this dialogue.

Play Bigger: Looking back, and its impact today

Al Ramadan comes into the conversation bearing data about the businesses and companies we’ve observed when writing Play Bigger, as well as some new players that have achieve the same feat since then.

To recap, Al Ramadan and Christopher Lochhead wrote a book back in 2014 called Play Bigger, which talks about category design and how it can make you become a category leader in your chosen space. One of the things they’ve found out in the course of their research is that Category Leaders tend to corner 76% of the value of said space.

Though when they wrote Play Bigger, the world was nowhere near as digitized as it is today. So a lot of the research was based on tech companies back then. But now, as more and more categories are behaving like tech categories due to digital scalability and digital reach, these findings are becoming true for every category.

Category Kings to Category Leaders

Al Ramadan shares that he and his team looked into the 35 Category Kings that they have observed back in Play Bigger, and check on their current situation in the market sphere.

In Play Bigger, we originally published a set of research and tracked 35 Category Kings in the tech space and their market caps at the time were 465 billion and those same companies today are now worth 1.9 trillion.

“If you track what happened to those 35 kings, as we call them back then, between the year of 2014 to the year of 2021. You want to know what the numbers are? At the time in 2014, the entire pool of the 35 category kings were valued at 465 billion. They are now valued at 1.9 trillion. That is, they’ve created more than $1,000,001.5 in market cap and the annual for those people who care about this stuff like Investors and Financial people. The compound interest growth rate of those kings. Market cap wise, is 22.46%.” – Al Ramadan

Given this data, it begs the question of how many understand that this is the new dynamic, and how many entrepreneurs and marketers still think that it’s a big leap of faith to follow.

To hear more from Al Ramadan and how Category Kings can become legendary Category Leaders, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Al Ramadan is a co-founding partner of Play Bigger Advisors and coauthor of the book, Play Bigger. He also co-founded Quokka Sports, which revolutionized the way people experience sport online.

Al then joined Macromedia and Adobe, where he spent almost ten years changing the way people think about great digital experiences. At Adobe, Al led teams that created the Rich Internet Applications category and helped develop the discipline of experience design.

In the early ‘90s he applied data science to Australia’s Americas Cup — an innovation in sports performance analytics. His work in sailing led directly to the idea for Quokka. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Links

Connect with Al Ramadan!

Play Bigger | LinkedIn | Category Contenders

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 this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, our guest Alexander Rose asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks. We go deep into that question, and a myriad of other topics in today’s dialogue.

Alexander Rose is the executive director of the Long Now Foundation. And their mission is to foster long-time, long-term thinking. And they’re probably most known for the building of this massive 10,000-year clock with the support of Jeff Bezos.

If you are anyone who cares about products, if you’re an engineer, a product leader, or frankly, anyone else who cares about creating products, or a different future, you’re going to love this conversation.

Alexander Rose on The Long Now Foundation

The conversation starts off with Alexander describing the purpose of The Long Now Foundation and The Long Now Idea itself. It was started by a set of both technologist and artists, who are part of the earlier generation of Silicon Valley.

“It was a group of people that were realizing that by the kind of fetishization of speed that was happening, especially around Silicon Valley, in technology, circles, that we were taking a lot of things off the table. So things like climate change, if you were only given a few years to solve something like that, you basically won’t even start. But if you are willing to think about something, at least in terms of centuries or generations, you could imagine how you might solve these large challenges that humanity is now facing.” – Alexander Rose

Brian Eno, one of the founders of the Long Now Foundation, coined the term, and he really stretched it out to the 10,000 years we’ve had, to the 10,000 years in the future, making it a 20,000-year story.

Humanity 10,000 Years into the Future

The focus then shifts into the story of what will happen 10,000 years into the future. For Alexander, he believes that humanity will still be there, but it depends on what we do today if they are thriving or struggling by then.

“I very much believe that humanity is going to be around for the next 10,000 years. The question is, are we making decisions that are going to help those future generations right now? As Jonas Salk originally asked: Are we being good ancestors, or are we being bad ancestors? And how can we be better ones?” – Alexander Rose

Alexander then proceeds to discuss our ongoing report card on the matter.

Alexander Rose on Thinking of the “Good Old Days”

Talking about the past, particularly the notion of the good old days, Alexander firmly thinks that we definitely have it better today than in the distant past. It is just that, we are used to modern comforts and the ever-growing technology at the palm of our hands, that we take those things for granted and focus on the bad things todays and reminisce on the good memories from the past.

Alexander describes it like a pendulum swinging back and forth. While there are swings on both directions, the momentum for the forward / positive swing is oftentimes bigger than the backwards or negative one.  Though granted in today’s climate, it’s hard to see the positives than the negatives.

While the past would be nice to visit, a person from this time would find it a horrendous place to live in, minus the comforts that they have been accustomed to.

To learn more about Alexander Rose and The Long Now Foundation and mindset, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Alexander Rose

Links

Connect with Alexander Rose!

The 10,000-year clock

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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Today’s episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different is a love letter to our military and veterans. Our guest Christian Anschuetz shares his story of how he looked up to these brave heroes growing up, and how he became one of the heroes that serve our country.

Christian Anschuetz retired from the U.S. military as a Marine Captain. After his service, he had a long and successful career as both an entrepreneur and an S&P 500, Senior C-level executive. After hanging up his uniform as and executive and advisor, he continues to serve as one of the leaders of the organization called Project RELO and will be spearheading an upcoming endeavor called Task Force Tribute.

If you are interested in his story, and the story of thousands of active military and veterans who have served our country, stay tuned to this episode.

Christian Anschuetz & the Legendary Humans of the US Military

Imagine being 12 years old at home with your dad, as you watch a strange car pull up in front of your house. Two men in uniform get out, and one’s a chaplain. This is an experience only Goldstar families know. This was also the moment a 12-year-old Christian Anschuetz, learned that his older brother and hero, Norman, had died serving his country.

Years later, Christian finds himself joining the military himself. He did so to honor the memory of his brother, and the love of country in his heart. He eventually became a Marine Captain and went to serve for several years.

We often forget that military service in our country is completely voluntary. So it takes a tough and brave soul to go through all the harsh training, and eventually deploy to dangerous and unknown territories. To sacrifice so much to serve speaks volumes to their love and loyalty to our country.

After Christian retired from service, he found himself in the entrepreneurial side of things, where he utilized his expertise in advising and training business leaders and executives on how to hone their leadership skills.

Project RELO

Christian talks about Project RELO, a veteran non-profit that he founded. He provides a quick description of what they do, and how they help hone the nation’s top CEOs and management teams to think different.

“What we do is we take some of the nation’s top executive leadership of fortune 500, CEOs and their management teams, and we provide leadership training to them. But what we do is we actually go on to military bases, and we conduct full military operations for three days. We do everything from convoy operations, communications, weapons handling, etc.” – Christian Anschuetz

The beauty of Project RELO is that the people teaching these leadership training are transitioning military members. So it not only trains future business leaders to focus and learn leadership skills from another perspective, it also helps these transitioning military members and veterans have an idea on how they can use their previous experience to find work, or even build up new careers.

Task Force Tribute

Christian then talks about Task Force Tribute, which is a huge undertaking that Project RELO will be undertaking soon.

One thing he pointed out was that not a lot of people know that people they mingle with on a day-to-day basics is a veteran, or is serving in some capacity in the military. Part of it is the depiction of what military does in the media. So when they eventually leave the service, there are certain preconceptions on what they could do for a career or business moving forward.

As said earlier, Project RELO helps shine a light to both business leaders and military members that these military members’ skills are not just confined to military-related activities. They are well-equipped with other talents and skills, plus the military discipline that has been trained to them for years.

Task Force Tribute aims to tell their story in a more elaborate way. They want to tell the story of these legendary people, both active and veterans alike, and share their perspectives to those who they have protected and served.

To learn more about Christian Anschuetz, Project RELO, and Task Force Tribute, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christian Anschuetz, Marine Captain (retd.), Executive Leadership Advisor

Executive leader and advisor in art and science of ‘strategy activation,’ Christian Anschuetz helps industry leaders re-imagine and re-invent how their companies do business. His unique blend of market-shaping vision and leading-edge tech savvy coupled with a strong belief in the power of service over self helps leaders step beyond conventional thinking.

The result? Envisioning and executing future-proofing market strategies that lead to competitive edge, rapid growth, and lasting digital transformation.

Christian has held C-level and executive leadership positions at top global firms in the advertising, cyber security, global safety and supply-chain arenas, and is known for success in case studies by Microsoft, Intel, HP, and Oracle.

He is also a professor of Strategic Marketing in the MBA program at UNC in Chapel Hill.

As a proud member of the US Marine Corps, he founded and heads Project RELO, a nonprofit that helps veterans transition from military service to corporate careers through partnerships with executive business leaders.

You can catch him regularly on Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans, “Anschuetz on Leadership,” or applying contemporary technologies to farming as cultivates his organic, sustainable lavender fields.

Links

Connect with Christian Anschuetz!

LinkedIn | Project RELO | Task Force Tribute

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!