The 22 Laws of Category Design - Category Pirates

Partial excerpts (antilibrary)

The 22 Laws of Category Design

2023

Name & Claim Your Niche Share Your POV, And Move The World From Where It Is To Somewhere Different

Introduction

Unlike most business books that try to appeal to as many people as possible, this book is (purposely) not for everyone. Instead, it’s for a very small percentage of business people

most people in business are not trying to use category design to create a new category that changes the future and generates exponential new value. Instead, many people in business are trying to “not get fired.” Many people want to go to work, contribute, and go home.

This book is for the small percentage of business people who have a different mind. It’s purpose-built for people who want to make an experiential difference, not be incrementally better.

Category design is about the exponentially different. It’s about creating different futures by creating new and different business categories.

This book is for those who want to continually reflect on category design so they can transform their thinking, actions, and outcomes

This book is meant to be read repeatedly, even if it’s for five minutes a day.

Category design requires the unlearning of much of what you’ve been taught about strategy, marketing, and business

Unlearning is way harder than learning

That’s why certain chapters include several “thinking about thinking” exercises that we want you to set aside time to ask yourself

Category Design is something you “learn,” but it is more so something you “get.”

Your first lesson: Everything is the way it is because somebody changed the way it was.

you can read it in any sequence you want. We want you to read the table of contents, reflect on the dreams that excite you and the nightmares that scare you, then go to the precise chapter that helps you the most that day.

twenty-two core principles of category design

you need a radical willingness to consider a different point of view

Law #7: Position Yourself or Be Positioned

If you are comparable, you are replaceable.

Too often, building a “personal brand” turns your entire content strategy into an exercise in talking about you.

Personal Category Design is your Commitment to Something Bigger than Yourself

Step 4: Hitch your niche to a rocket ship.

You can only charge so much for a book or a course, service, or consulting project. To get above a ten-time or twenty-time or fifty-time pricing increase, you will likely need to hitch your niche to someone else’s rocket ship. This means finding ways to tie your incentives and earnings to someone else’s success—who may be playing in a bigger, more highly valued category than you or solving a bigger, even more valuable problem than you

An easy example here would be choosing to take your compensation in stock options as opposed to cash

Carve out your niche in a category that has twenty-year tailwinds. An abundance of growth covers many sins to allow you to make your mistakes without major repercussions

Change-in-control, M&A transactions, IPOs, or sales are fantastic ways to hitch your niche

The first niche down is scary.