David Woodland is currently a Product Manager at Facebook, previously Head of Product at Palm.com and a Product Manager at Pebble. He is a father of 4, and a Management Consultant who found product-building life in Silicon Valley to be way more attractive than spreadsheets.

On this episode we talk about his work and life balance, what it was like to work at Pebble, how his consulting career prepared him to be a great product manager and a tinkerer, how a team of 12 can launch a bran new smart phone from scratch,  how David got Stephen Curry, his childhood hero, to be the face of their company, and lastly, what it was like for him to be a Mormon in Silicon Valley.

In this episode, Christopher Lochhead discusses why category creation is the new growth strategy for legendary marketing.

Great companies do not focus on incremental growth, rather, they focus on being exponentially different. These leading companies introduce people to new businesses and provide them with new ways of doing things.
Making A Different Future
Legendary companies shape our lives and design a different future. They are on a mission to make the future different. Further, these companies create something exciting ⁠— a new way of living, thinking and doing business ⁠— category creation. Through category creation, these companies are pioneering the way to the future.
“Many times they are solving a problem we didn’t know we had—or a problem we didn’t pay attention to because we never thought there was another way.” - Christopher Lochhead
These legendary companies make ordinary companies run for their lives. These ordinary companies want to profit from the world for offering it the same set of products and services.
Big Es and Small Es
Lochhead cites different big enterprises as well as small enterprises as an example. Huge companies now started as small when they changed our way of thinking. Companies such as AirBNB, Google, Amazon, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and Salesforce not only created great products⁠—they created a good company and a great category.
“They had to courage to stand on their own to create a new category of products / services they niched down. And by designing a different niche, they got to own it.”  - Christopher Lochhead
Category First, Brands Come Second
Categories make the company, not the other way around. In relation to this, if we carefully examine big brands, there are no legendary companies in a bad category. There will be no customer-recall of brands if these brands are not tailored to cater to a category.
“Brands only matter if they dominate categories that matter. Category design is a new lens, play with it!” - Christopher Lochhead
To hear more about Category Creation as the new growth strategy and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 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 ⁠— which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion.

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

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!

In this bonus episode of EconTalk, economist and Nobel Laureate Paul Romer discusses the coronavirus pandemic with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Romer argues that the status quo of shutdown and fear of infection is unsustainable. Returning to normal requires an inexpensive, quick, and relatively painless test. Such tests are now available. The challenge is in relaxing certain regulations and then creating a supply chain of production and availability. Romer then explains how such a test could ease a return to something like normalcy for many sectors of the economy. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the dynamics of the labor market in the current situation.

Stephen M. R. Covey is a New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal best-selling author of The SPEED of Trust—The One Thing That Changes Everything. He is the former CEO of the Covey Leadership Center, which, under his stewardship, became the largest leadership development company in the world. Stephen personally led the strategy that propelled his father's book, Dr. Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, to become one of the two most influential business books of the 20th Century, according to CEO Magazine. 

It can be difficult to get ahead at work when someone else is always taking credit for what the team does, but what can you do to deal with selfish individuals in a professional manner, how can you be a giver and not get taken advantage of, and how do matchers balance givers and takers?

“There’s a guy named Dave Smith. He was the first Disney archivist, and I’ve been reading his stuff for twenty years now, and that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up. I wanted to be the librarian at the Disney archives, which is a really weird thing.”

SNP’s founder Maureen Taylor talks to Greg Koberger, founder and CEO of ReadMe, about the difference between a CEO and a founder, the inspiration behind challenge coins, and how his ideal role is Chief Whimsy Officer.

Think Like A Founder is produced by SNP Communications in San Francisco California. Learn more by visiting us at www.snpnet.com or connect with Maureen Taylor on LinkedIn to continue the conversation there. 

Series Producer: Roisin Hunt. Sound design: Marc Ream. Creative Producer: Eli Shell. Content and scripting: Mike Sullivan. Production Coordinator: Natasha Thomas. 
Thanks also to Selena Persiani-Shell, John Hughes and Renn Vara.

Starting a company out of Hawaii is an unusual choice, but CIndy Wu says it has been a fantastic experience that has changed how she designs software. Find out more and learn about science, dinosaurs and caves!

Do you want to get inspired? This episode is for you.

Jason Calacanis is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He was one of the early believes in Uber, Calm, Robinhood and many others. He is a host of the show This Week in Startups, and the author of Angel, a founder of Launch.co, Inside.com, and a friend to many rich and famous folks in Silicon Valley.

On this episode, Jason shares his views and wisdom, advice that he's accumulated throughout his career, and lessons learned from other successful entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, and Jeff Bezos.

James Cridland is a podcaster, writer, public speaker, and a radio host. He is also the founder of podnews.net. Today he shares his view on the future of podcasts, what works, what does not, and what might be the nest big opportunity in the business.