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On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about how you can be a Thought Leader. More specifically, we’ll discuss how to be a Solo Thought Leader and build yourself up with our guest, Diego Pineda.

Diego Pineda is the author of the book The Solo Thought Leader: from Solopreneur to Go-To Expert in Seven Steps. Being viewed as a thought leader is a powerful thing. Becoming known for a niche that you own through leading thoughts is one of the most powerful ways to get there to either have a legendary career as a solo creator or a thought leader of some kind.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Diego Pineda on Going Solo

The conversation starts off with the topic of the recent great resignation, or rather the aftermath of it. According to the data gathered over time, it seems that most of the people who resigned went solo or opened their own businesses.

“I actually talked to somebody who does this for a living, like helping people transition from being in a company to going solo. And he said, even just when the pandemic started, it was about 35% of the people were leaving their jobs. He thinks it is much larger than that. So there’s a lot of people just going out of their jobs and going solo. So this is a trend. And I mean, I think it’s gonna be growing.” – Diego Pineda

Why People are Going Solo

When asked why this was the case, Diego explains that it could be due to a number of things.

“I think there’s a few things. One is, people during the pandemic just realize what was possible, just working from home, having this freedom. They feel like managing their own time and not having to commute or being an office or all that BS that has to deal with our office politics. They realize there’s this option, so why go back?

Second, I think just the technology, the tools, and being able to just reach out people through LinkedIn, through social media and getting clients that way is possible. So people say it’s possible, so why not? I can do it. Right. So and then you get people like that on the internet, saying, “Hey, I reached in two years while going solo, I went from zero to a million.” Of course, those are some exceptional cases, but then other people will think it’s possible. “So why not me? Why not try it?” They just go for it.” – Diego Pineda

With new technology and tools being developed at breakneck speed, and existing ones being improved to be more versatile than ever, it’s really no wonder why someone would think they could go solo, as long as they learn how to make use of these tools at their disposal.

Be your own Thought Leader

When the topic of influencers and content creators just spewing out the same thoughts of someone who is at the forefront of a certain category, Diego agrees that not only is it not sustainable, but you are also competing for a small piece of that niche.

According to Diego, you need to be your own Thought Leader and come up with your own ideas. If nothing else, have a unique angle that can differentiate you from the rest. One way to do that is to find something that is dogma, or the “best” practice in an industry, and find if there is anything wrong with it. From there, you can come up with ideas that can fix the problem, or maybe come up with something entirely different as a solution.

To hear more from Diego Pineda and how you can be a Solo Thought Leader, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Diego Pineda is the author of two novels, 9 non-fiction books, and hundreds of articles and blogs as a science writer, a business writer, and a sales and marketing writer.

He started his career as a medical writer while writing fiction on the side.

Diego is also a book coach helping solopreneurs and business leaders write their first book fast so they can become thought leaders in their industries, gain authority and visibility, and make more money.

Links

Connect with Diego Pineda!

The Solo Thought Leader | LinkedIn

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! 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 Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about the three marketing metrics that matter. Because it appears as if there’s still a lot of confusion out there about this. So I thought we could unpack the real metrics that matter for marketing.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Three Marketing Metrics

Now, let’s talk about the three marketing metrics that matter, and break them down.

Marketing that does not drive revenue is not marketing

A lot of the counterarguments that I have received on this point is that marketing stuff people do can drive revenue. But the thing is, most of them do not drive long-term revenue. So if it doesn’t make the cash register sing consistently, It ain’t got that thing.

But what about brand advertising or Awareness campaigns? Those things only matter if you already have revenue coming in over time. If you’re trying to build up awareness and brand before putting up a good product and making good revenue out of it, that’s like putting the cart in front of the horse.

Marketing that does not drive category potential is not marketing

Related to creating revenue, is building up category potential. It’s important, as it helps build demand for your product, whether you are creating a new category, or revolutionizing one with your product.

Because when you have the ability to create demand, it will convert to revenue over time, which circles back to the first metric.

Marketing that does drive increases in the market cap or valuation is not marketing

Here’s the AHA for the third metric: investors in growth companies and stocks buy potential, not performance.

What drives our market cap is the investor’s perception of the size and growth rate of the category that we’re designing. Be their belief about our ability to prosecute the magic triangle, product, company, and category and earn 76% of the economics in the category that we are designing, because that’s the average number that the average category cleaner can get.

The other metrics like revenue growth, customer growth, margin growth, etc. are all metrics that validate that this company has massive potential.

How Legendary Marketing Executives do it

The most legendary marketing executives, CEOs and entrepreneurs, when they talk to investors, the first thing they say is that we are designing a legendary new market category that has massive growth potential. And let me tell you why. So they start with the potential and marketing creates that perception and then helps the company turn perception into reality.

Those are the metrics that matter: marketing needs to drive revenue, marketing needs to drive category potential, and then marketing needs to convert category potential in the eyes of investors into market cap. Because the company with the biggest market cap that is sustainable, I’m not talking about some kind of bullshit magic trick here. I’m talking about building enduring value over time. as measured by market cap, the number one market cap company in the category, always wins.

Revenue, of course, is a critical metric for driving market cap. But it’s not the only one. The perception of the future is actually more important from a market cap perspective. And so marketing drives revenue, short-term, medium-term, and long-term marketing drives market potential.

To listen to a more detailed explanation of the three marketing metrics, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! 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 Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about the three stages of a legendary career. Let’s also talk about the lessons we can learn about it from a source you wouldn’t think about at first, Star Wars. Yes, that Star Wars.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Three Stages of Legendary Career: Star Wars Style

So how do we discuss legendary careers using Star Wars?

Well, if you look at it on a higher level, the three stages of having a legendary career follow a Jedi’s progression. There’s being a Luke / Lucy Skywalker stage, where you are just starting out. If you’re lucky and successful, there’s the Obi-Wan stage.

And if you are even more successful, and legendary at that, there’s the Yoda stage.

Jedi Breakdown

Let us explain even further.

When you’re first coming up, and if you are somebody who is gravitating towards the exponential different as opposed to the incremental better, or want to create, design, and dominate new future market categories, as opposed to just somebody who wants to kind of maintain the status quo, you get identified pretty quickly as being high potential. Much like Luke was as a padawan.

If this person is lucky and successful, and becomes a mentor or teacher for other upcoming high potential individuals, they enter their Obi-Wan stage. And if you end up being a legend in your chosen career, much like Yoda, you will have the authority and success that befits the position.

The True Reward

When I myself was a Luke, I thought that the rewards for being a person with high potential who excels and produces great results was that you get the recognition and fame, as well as the riches that come along with it.

But as you progress through the different levels of your career, you realize that while those rewards are worth pursuing, it is not the biggest reward out there.

The real reward is you get to a place in your 40s or 50s, where the world acknowledges you, as a champion, as a legendary Luke / Lucy Skywalker, and you graduate. Now, the world grants you the Obi-Wan status.

To hear more about the different legendary career and Star Wars, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! 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 Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about how to use category design thinking to drive short term revenue.

We talked a lot about what to do in a recession on our last episode, and on this episode, we’re going deep on a very specific topic, about how to make the cash register sing immediately.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Short Term Category Design

One of the things that we hear about category design is category design is too expensive. Only big companies can design categories, or it takes too long it takes six to 10 years to build a category, we need revenue now. But the truth is that category design can drive revenue for you in the next immediate term days or weeks if you take a category science approach.

As we talked about on the last episode, most companies in a downturn compete harder and harder for demand existing demand that is falling. And it’s like fighting for the falling demand knife and cutting yourself into shreds.

Category design is distinct from Legacy approaches to marketing is actually the cheapest, fastest way to make the cash register sing.

Things to Consider

What I’m about to share with you is work that call Eddie and I are currently in the process of helping a legendary b2c tech company who is scaling at over 100% a year. In spite of that, they wanted to get really focused, particularly with the economy doing what it’s doing on how to continue their triple digit plus growth.

First, it starts with an understanding of super consumers. The general idea is that a very small number of consumers, customers, clients, readers, you know, consumers of any kind customers of any kind, typically 10% or less are the ones that are on the bleeding edge of what makes a category go. They’re super influential. They’re super committed to the category and typically to the brand leader in that category. They also tend to drive a lot of innovation; they also tend to be the ones that evangelize the loudest. So the first step is knowing your super consumers, and observing them.

This leads to the second point, which is a genius insight from Eddie, is that a super of one is a super of nine. That is to say, people who are passionate about something, tend to be passionate about several things. So what are the adjacencies that the Supers might also love? There’s a whole bunch of categories that they might be interested in.

To learn more about how to drive short term revenue through category design, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

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

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Welcome to a very special episode of Lochhead on Marketing, where we talk about how to make money in a recession.

In times that are challenging, one of the greatest things we all can do is contribute what we can contribute. Given that it looks like we’re about to be in a recession, what Eddie Yoon Nicolas Cole, and I aka the Category Pirates decided to do was to write a new mini book newsletter. It’s called How To Make Money In A Recession: Five steps to create demand for your product, service or platform.

We elected to make the written version of this free. There’ll be a link to it at the end of this show notes. So consider this episode, a mini book audio read.

We are in a Recession

Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,

We are in a recession.

(Not officially, but it is not looking good.)

Stocks are down. Startup valuations have plummeted. Bitcoin and Ethereum have lost more than 50% of their total value since their respective highs back in November, 2021. And sentiment around Silicon Valley is that the next 12-18 months are going to be challenging for companies looking to raise money.

But where there is chaos, there is opportunity.

Approximately 10% of companies get stronger in downturns. And you can’t be in the 10% unless you do some serious thinking.

Through the category lens, downturns are simple to understand—and have a clear path to navigate. When times get tough, businesses, governments, households, and individuals all do the same thing: they create two lists.

• “Must Haves”
• “Nice To Haves”

Then they start cutting the “Nice To Haves” to lower costs—as a direct response to their revenue / income / buying power shrinking.

The Question Every Business Should Ask

Which means the seminal question is: what makes people put some categories/brands/products on the “Must Have” list versus the “Nice To Have” list? 

Perceived value.

(Everything we value, we’ve been taught to value.) 

The difference between a dumb idea and a great one, or the difference between useful products and useless ones is the perception we have based on what we have been taught. (Don’t forget: pet rocks used to be in demand.)

The trick is to get your product/service/platform on the “Must Have” list, and to be as high up on the list as possible. Because the higher the category is on the hierarchy of perceived value in the consumer’s mind, the greater the likelihood they will keep buying from you.

Which is why savvy leaders market the category in downturns.

Because people make their lists by category first, and brand second.

The Net-Positive Effects of Recession

Elon Musk was a guest on the All In podcast and summarized the net-positive effects of recessions well:

“Recessions are not necessarily a bad thing. I’ve been through a few of them. What tends to happen, if you have a boom that goes on for too long, you get misallocation of capital. It starts raining money on fools, basically. Any dumb thing gets money. At some point, it gets out of control… and the bullshit companies go bankrupt and the ones that are building useful products are prosperous.” 

When most people hear the word “recession,” they imagine the housing crisis of 2008 or the dot-com bubble in the late 90s—and all of the businesses that went under as a result.

But what doesn’t get talked about enough are the incredible companies that emerged out of these challenging times as well. Google and Amazon both came out of the dot-com bubble in the 90s (as did hundreds of other world-changing companies). And Uber, Spotify, Airbnb, Square, and dozens of other next-gen technology companies were founded between 2006 and 2009, right in the middle of the greatest financial crisis to ever threaten America.

Recessions are pressure-cookers that rid the system of businesses failing to live up to the value they are promising society.

To hear more on how you can make money even during a recession, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead 

Links

How To Make Money In A Recession

Category Pirates

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! 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 Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about the big startup downturn marketing mistakes and what to do about it. We also talk about why people who create demand are in massive demand.

Lastly, there is the topic about your career, and what to do when the economy goes sideways, both in your business and in your career.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Startup Downturn Marketing Mistake

The reality is, it’s not just startups who make this mistake.

But before that, let’s go through the top 10 list of what happens when the recession hits.

Number one, the recession hits. The immediate impact of that, of course, is number two, demand falls. So what do most companies do? Number three, they market hard in an effort to catch demand.

Remember, when most people say marketing, what they mean is compete in an existing market category for existing demand. So when they do marketing, what they’re really doing is demand capture.

So when the recession hits to demand falls, three, they market hard to catch, falling demand or some people say catch a falling knife. As a result, number four, customer acquisition costs aka CAC goes up.

Number six to nine is just running around in circles, repeating numbers two to four. Until you reach number ten, where they finally run out of time and money.

Here’s the big learning: He who competes for demand loses, she who creates demand wins. It also happens to be why category design is the most powerful underground skill in business. Most people don’t understand that just like you can create and design a product and accompany you could also create and design a market category.

Recession through a Different Lens

I get into trouble for saying this, but most people immediately assume a negative defensive position in a recession or a downturn. However, approximately 10% of companies get stronger during the recession.

In the last week, I have had many conversations with entrepreneurs and CEOs about how to take advantage of the coming downturn. I know that sounds crazy to a lot of people, but you can’t be in the 10%, that gets stronger, and you can’t be in the elite companies that actually are able to take advantage of a downturn unless you at least ask the questions. So I’m asking you to consider a different way.

Choosing a Different Way

So here’s the different way and specific as it relates to shrinking demand. So there’s three kinds of demand. Number one, as we talked about demand capture. Number two, demand creation. That’s why some people call it category creation.

One of the stupid arguments we hear all the time is, “well, category design is dumb, because why would we go to a market where there’s zero demand, and we have to create it all, when we can just catch demand? Okay? She who creates the demand wins. That’s why.

Now in a downturn, here’s the problem. It can take some time to create demand. People say, “well, we don’t have time our revenues falling, we need to generate revenue now.” This is where the third type of approach, wherein we dam the demand. By doing so, you redirect demand from an existing market to a new solution that your product or services provides.

To hear more about how to deal with Startup Downturn Marketing Mistake, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! 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 Lochhead on Marketing, let’s talk about a critical question: Who are you going to be when the shit hits the fan?

As we have talked about in previous episodes, it is starting to look like the business environment could get very hard here. Some people in Silicon Valley are even saying that it could be like back in 2008. Sequoia Capital wrote their seminal “RIP, Good Times” presentation, and its final slide says, “Get real, or go home”. No matter what’s going to happen next in the economy, or frankly, the world, it’s probably time for all of us to get real or go home.

So let’s dig into why some people step up, and others melt down in times of crisis.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

The Signs

When I was in my late 20s, and into my early 30s, I was the founding CMO of a company called Scient. We were a leader in the we called E-business Innovation Space, we were one of the very first consulting firms to focus on building E-businesses or Digital Businesses. We did incredibly well, as a matter of fact, the company was founded, I believe, in 98, maybe late 97. By 2000, we had grown to almost 3000 people, which is incredible for a consulting startup, essentially. We were public and had a market cap of about $9 billion.

Now, if you were around back then, you’ve done your homework, and you know the.com bust happened. Like all bad things, they happen over time. It built starting by about February, March, we could feel things starting to get bad.

Shortly thereafter, we could feel the rumblings our pipeline wasn’t starting to look very good. There was weird shit happening with our customers. And there was a slow takedown that happened from about March, slowly, slowly, slowly, building over the summer, and by the fall, we were in a freefall.

Sh*t Hits the Fan

Due to all that, we had to do the first ever layoff in the history of the company. It was insanely painful.

So when we announced the miss in the projected stocks, we do the layoff. The people we laid off are amazing. They were cheering the company on saying please go forward and be successful sign had an incredible culture. So as painful as it was, the exiting people were, were incredible warriors and supporters. And the people who stayed really wanted to make a go of it.

However, people at management seemed to be focusing on the wrong things, rather than discussing how to move forward, given the resources we still had at the moment. This continued until I left the company, and from there the company continued on its freefall rather than picking itself up and starting anew.

How People React to Disruption

So why do I share that with you? It’s a great example of the shit hitting the fan for a company. In my opinion, an executive team unwilling to deal with the reality of the situation, and unwilling to deal with it with any kind of speed is a bad way to go at it. That’s why I got so mad and took off, and that’s why the CEO of the company fired me. After that, the company vaporized.

To hear more how legendary people react when disruption happens in the market, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

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

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As you all know, normally there aren’t any guests for Lochhead on Marketing. But today, we have a special episode for tech entrepreneurs and marketers, as we have a dialogue with Megan Bowen and Chris Walker of Refine Labs.

Megan Bowen and Chris Walker are the COO and CEO of Refine Labs. They also have an amazing podcast, called The State of Demand Gen podcast.

As there have been a lot of bad thinking in marketing, a lot of which stems from old thinking. Chris and Megan have been doing a lot in helping drive the conversation onto new grounds, and making tech companies become in demand again. So if you’d like to hear their thoughts on the matter, stay tuned.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Contributing to the Marketing World

The conversation starts with lauding Megan and Chris on the wonderful work they are doing on their podcast, State of Demand Gen. Christopher himself has been a guest before; you can check the episode here. But while Refine Labs has been around for a while, there’s not really a lot of things that people know about Chris and Megan, and what they do.

Megan shares that her background has always been in customer success and company operations. For her, Chris is the true visionary and disruptor when it comes to marketing.

“What I think I really bring to the table is a different way to think about company building. And I’ve had a ton of fun becoming a marketer in how we think about acquiring great talent and positioning our company in the eyes of candidates.” – Megan Bowen

Chris adds that without Megan, it would’ve been hard to make his ideas become reality.

A Clear Shift in the Market

Chris comments that it has been obvious to him and the team that there has been a shift in how people in B2B actually want to buy things. But surprisingly, a lot of companies are not adjusting to that reality because they’re stuck in the old ways of marketing.

“That shift sort of goes in line with what some of those topics that you talked about, Christopher. Native Digitals and Native Analogs is one piece of it. So how do people primarily want to engage research, discover, evaluate their suppliers and decisions and make decisions? How do they want to do that? As we start moving into the workforce, there’s more, I think you’ve mentioned, a stat of like, at least 50% of actual decision makers in a B2B buying process are now Native Digitals.” – Chris Walker

With this shift comes a lot of new opportunities and approaches to try out. So the slow adjustment of most companies nowadays to adapt to such things is what gives companies like Refine Labs to sort of “pop out of nowhere” and dominate the market.

On Native Digitals and Native Analogs

On the topic of Native Digitals and Native Analogs, it seems that S&P 500 CEOs, who are still majority Native Analogs, are not aware that the buying market is being overrun by Native Digitals. According to Chris, those who have noticed have started to create categories and marketing catering to that demographic. But for Chris, that isn’t nearly enough.

“I think that it’s important to look more holistically at the overall business. So some of the things that power our advantage. We think about our culture and our talent, talent, experience and talent management from a native digital lens. We think about building future products and experiences for customers through a native digital lens. And so when you look at the entire business, not just your marketing, there’s a lot of companies that can go out and put nice wallpaper on their marketing. Well, the foundations and stuff is cracking inside of the actual building.” – Chris Walker

Megan adds that it’s not only an approach that one should take in marketing, but in other aspects of the business as well.

“I think that a core component of any business, being successful and continuing to grow is attracting and retaining the right people to join their team and to continue to execute and innovate. And just like people are running old marketing plays and not catching up to what Native Digital’s need. Companies also have very antiquated ways that they think about retaining and attracting talent.” – Megan Bowen

To hear more from Megan Bowen and Chris Walker, and what you can do to avoid old marketing pitfalls, download and listen to this episode.

Bio

Megan Bowen

Megan Bowen has spent over a decade building and managing customer success and revenue generation teams for leading technology companies. She has worked with companies across the food, medical, and hospitality industries to create top-tier customer management functions, all focused on building long-term relationships and generating more revenue.

Megan currently leads marketing, sales, account management, client experience & operations teams at Managed by Q, the platform for office management. Her team is responsible for selling business-critical office services to new and existing clients, and providing workplace advice to thousands of companies with complex needs in the janitorial and maintenance spaces.

Prior to Q, Megan built the account management function for GrubHub/Seamless from scratch, and scaled the B2B client experience and account management structure for Seamless’ 5,000+ clients. Megan graduated from Adelphi University with a degree in Business Management.

Chris Walker

Chris Walker is the Founder and CEO of Refine Labs, a progressive demand generation firm that challenges the status quo in B2B marketing. Fueled by marketing execution at scale, Refine Labs uses real data from real customers to create demand strategy and research for their clients.

Before launching Refine Labs, Chris led marketing at two B2B firms where he built the foundation of his unique perspective on demand generation. Chris also hosts the State of Demand Gen podcast where he chats with today’s top B2B leaders to share tangible advice and tactics to over 15,000 marketers.

Chris Walker grew up in Boston, MA and graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. He started his professional career in the MedTech industry, migrating then into Product Management before making the move to marketing. Chris is also a serial entrepreneur, always finding ways to make an existing product or service better, or market a saturated product in different ways to break through the noise.

Links

Connect with Chris and Megan today!

Refine Labs | Chris’ LinkedIn | Megan’s LinkedIn | State of Demand Gen Podcast

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! 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, let’s talk about some of the smart assumptions we can make about the rest of 2022.

Of course, this is based on the numerous dialogues I’ve had in the past months with some of the smartest entrepreneurs, VCs, CEOs, and executives in Silicon Valley. If you’re interested in those conversations, check out Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different in your podcast feed today.

Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.

Assumptions for 2022

Without further ado, here are the assumptions that could happen during the rest of 2022:

1. A Recession will happen – Most of the smart people in Silicon Valley and beyond are strategically planning for a recession, both in their business and in their personal lives. If it doesn’t happen, great. But it’s still better to have options should it be the case.
2. Inflation will continue – The US government and the US Treasury trying to grapple with it right now. Wages are also going up, and supply lines are still challenged in many categories and industries.
3. The Ukraine-Russia War will continue, and it will be long – David Gergen (FYD 266) said that he thought they would likely be sort of punch-drunk fighters before this thing ended. But we also had Dmitri Alperovitch (FYD 269), a renowned security expert, say that the war, or at least the major aspects of it, would be over within the month. Though there are still possibilities of digital skirmishes between the two. Regardless, the effects of this war will be far-reaching, and have humanitarian and economic impacts even after the war.
4. David Sacks (FYD 267) says that there might be a GOP landslide in November – Right now, Biden’s approval ratings are some of the lowest in history, and Democrats don’t seem to have a way to rally themselves, or show a specific point of view or plan to hold their position.
5. People are Hurting – People are on the edge. You can see it all over the place. People’s mental health seem a little fragile right now. These past couple of years have really taken its toll, and you can feel that fights could break out at the drop of a hat.
6. It will take at least 5 years’ time before Native Analog CEOs, CMOs and C-level executives to understand that Native Digitals are the new category of human – A great example of this is you hear people talking about returning to work. We’re not returning to work, people might go back to physical offices, but we’re not returning to work native, Digital’s want to live in a native digital world. As long as Native Analogs executives do not recognize this, there will be a disconnect with the old and new categories, and those who fail to cope could be left behind.
7. Variations and Market Caps will almost certainly continue to come down – That is what smart VCs are saying right now. So right now, they are “adjusting their thinking”. Given the data they have received over the past 12-24 months, they are expecting that there will be down runs that will happen.
8. As a result of no. 7, raising money will be harder, and going public will also be harder – Most companies may very well have a tough time going public in the relative near term. But that should not discourage those who think that they have a new category opportunity to pursue them. It might just be the thing that helps you gather resources to go public.
9. Cash is King again! (So manage it carefully) – This is also the result of both no. 7 and 8, so wise executive teams are managing their assets carefully.
10. No one ever cost cut themselves to greatness – While it’s all well and good that you are able to manage your resources carefully, don’t be parsimonious.
11. Recessions are not fun, but they can make good companies legendary – It is wise in tough economic times, to look for the growth opportunities to look for ways to make changes, and to look for ways to take your good company and make it legendary.
12. Now is a great time to launch new categories – Given that now is a great time to launch new categories, if there are companies that are most companies are retrenching and look, the reality is most company leaders are like penguins. They follow whatever all the other penguins are doing. So if you want to create a new category, now is the best time to do so, while others are still retrenching or trying to “rebrand” their company.
13. Now is a great time to do legendary work: tough times call for tough people – This is a tough time. It’s a scary time, the war is terrifying. The pain and suffering is horrible. The challenge in the economy is real and tough times call for tough people to stand up and do legendary work now is a great time to make the commitment to be that kind of legendary person.

Bio

Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.

He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.

In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion.

He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.

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