Category Superpower: Why Your Greatest Strength Depends On Making A Difference For Others

This is the difference between inward-focused personal development and outward-focused personal category design.

Arrrrr! 🏴‍☠️ Welcome to a free edition of Category Pirates. Each month, we publish “mini-books” that share radically different ideas to help you design and dominate new categories. Thank you for reading. And of course, forward this mini-book to anyone who you think needs to hop aboard the Pirate ship.

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Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,

The personal development market is worth over $40 billion and is growing. 

There’s a ton of content out there about how to be a great employee, manager, entrepreneur, partner, and communicator. Books like Damn Good Advice, Think And Grow Rich, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Us Pirates have read and researched many of these kinds of books. 

In fact, our research showed that the Personal Development category of business books is the largest and most profitable category. Of the 444 top-selling business books since 2004, it makes up 23% of the titles, 25% of Amazon reviews, 28% of unit volume sold, and 31% of revenue.

And because we’re Pirates, we like to look beyond the obvious takeaways. (Arrrrrrr!)

The vast majority of personal development books frame a single problem—you. 

The general message is something like, “Hey, you're broken. Aren't you miserable? Your life doesn't work, and you feel like shit sometimes, don't you?”

You’re the problem. 

You’re the one that needs fixing. 

And you need to do something about it.

• “Don’t just sit there. Do something. The answers will follow.” 

• "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

• "Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life."

It’s all you, you, you. You have to find your passion and do what makes you feel good. But to do that and “fix yourself,” you have to buy this book, join this course, get a personal brand, and attend this webinar. 

The problem with the traditional personal development approach (in our Pirate-y opinion) is it doesn't view personal growth from a category design lens.

Instead, there's an overwhelming emphasis on the self. 

Me me me me me me me (my personal brand) me me me me me me me (my journey) me me me me (my goals) me me me me me (my money) me me me me me (my fame).

"Me" is even shaping how Generation Z thinks about their careers:

• 57% of Gen Z said they'd like to become an influencer

• 53% of Gen Zers believe becoming an influencer is a reputable career choice and a similar amount would quit their current jobs if influencing would pay for their lifestyles

• 3 out of 10 Gen Zers would actually pay to become an influencer

You've seen this “me” attitude everywhere—books, podcasts, masterminds—all promising the secret formula to a "better" you. But let's pause and think for a moment. What if the core of personal transformation isn't just turning inward to find the greatest potential within yourself, but in turning outward towards others?

This isn't to say that self-improvement isn't valuable. 

It is. 

But focusing only on your growth is like running a race with blinders on. You might be moving fast, but you're missing the possibilities around you. This can lead to a narrow perspective. And if you’re not careful, you’ll become the self-centered motivational pablum-spewing POS people avoid at parties.

(Watch out for Gary VD—a socially transmitted disease.)

Instead, we want to share a different way to broaden your “personal development” horizons.

A Category Superpower is what you do that makes an exponential difference for others.

We all have one, whether you're a hardened pirate or a shiny new category designer.

Now, this is not your passion. Your passion is about you, but your Category Superpower is about others. The value of your superpower is directly proportional to the value you create. For others. Yes, it’s still your Superpower. But it only works when it makes a difference for others.

For example, Mariah Carey makes between $2-$3 million every Christmas (and $70-something million over time) from her song "All I Want for Christmas Is You." There is only one reason this happens. The song means something to others. How much Mariah thinks it’s awesome is irrelevant. What matters is that millions of people want to hear her song. It’s valuable to them.

As a result of creating that value for others, Ms. Carey is wealthy. 

Sure, you can choose not to believe this. 

But we choose to believe that every single person is on the planet for a purpose. We think that's very powerful mental scaffolding. And if we can connect our purpose (not passion) with making a difference, ta-da! We have something legendary.

A Category Superpower. 

This is the difference between inward-focused personal development and outward-focused personal category design. 

Category design shows you how to take your gifts (the things you are uniquely qualified in) and use them to generate massive outcomes for others.

People who know and use their superpowers love life. 

• They sleep well at night.

• Their friends/family look up to them.

• They have economic & emotional abundance.

• They don’t look for jobs, customers, or investors…

• …jobs, customers, or investors look for them!

How do you figure out your unique Category Superpower and create massive value for others?

Start by asking yourself:

• What problems are you obsessed with solving?

• What radical outcomes have you delivered in the past? 

• What’s your swagger that shows the world you mean business?

• What’s your unique Point of View that lets you see possibilities no one else can?

Your answers will help you begin to uncover your Category Superpower. You then want to focus on communicating and leveraging that superpower in the service of others. Because the key to a successful career (and a successful life) is your ability to make a genuine, lasting difference for those around you. 

This mini-book will help you understand what outcomes you achieve for others, giving you a superhuman amount of energy.

We'll break down a tool called the Category Superpower Map, give you fundamental questions to reflect on, share a template to help find your superpower, and explain how to leverage it to start making an exponential difference for others.

Which, ultimately, will make a massive difference for you. 😎

Let's dive in. 🤿

Uncover Your Category Superpower

A Category Superpower is your ability to deliver radical outcomes (consistently) for a problem that you’re obsessed with and have a unique POV on, with a hint of swagger. 

We’re going to say this again so you know we mean it:

Your superpower is not your “passion.” Your superpower is about what legendary results you can produce for others.

Results ≄ No Results + An Excuse

Results = Results

As we talk about in the Living Your Category POV mini-book, having a Category Superpower is what sets the best founders apart from those who are chasing the bottom line. They’re obsessed with creating value. They’re obsessed with solving the problem—it’s personal for them. 

(In our opinion, “it's just business” is BS. Everything is personal. And if business is anything, it’s people buying and selling value)

And that’s what makes them so good at seeing what the problem needs. 

Take Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and the brain behind ChatGPT—the biggest thing in tech since the iPod. 

Look, you can love or hate ChatGPT. But you’ve got to admire Sam’s unwavering commitment to the thing he cares about, creating useful and affordable AI solutions. And his team knows it. When Sam got fired, almost 95% of OpenAI employees threatened to quit unless he was reinstated. And Satya Nadella immediately took him on to build a new AI wing for Microsoft. But the very next week, OpenAI hired him back. 

They know Sam Altman has a superpower in crafting AI solutions.

It's not easy to replace him with another tech executive.

Same goes for one of Pirate Eddie’s long-time clients, Dwight Brown.

Dwight built an amazing career at Gillette, was the SVP of Marketing at Keurig from 2009 to 2014, and was the CMO of iRobot from 2014 to 2020. In both of his last stops, revenue grew 3x in 5-6 years. He took iRobot to over $1B in revenue and Keurig to over $4B in revenue. 

Dwight is a marketer who knows how to scale things. 

He has a very particular set of skills. 😎

Skills he has acquired over a very long career that can make him a nightmare for would-be competitors in his category. If companies don’t have Category Queen potential, that will be the end of it. He will not look for them. He will not pursue them. But if they do, and there are Superconsumers, he will look for them with his playbook. He will find them. And he will get them…with abundant kindness. 

Dwight is an amazing executive for three reasons: 

1. He is NOT a one-hit wonder. He’s scaled multiple $1B+ Category Queens. 

2. He has a clear playbook and partners for scaling Category Queens.

   1. Find your Superconsumers

   2. Listen and language their problem and POV

   3. Convert marketing into math via marketing mix modeling

   4. Test & learn, convert the CFO, partner with sales, sell the BOD, and double down

3. He is extremely choosy when he takes on a job.

   1. He won’t take a job for a job’s sake

   2. The product/category has to pass the “wow my wife” test

   3. He doesn’t want the CEO job…he knows his craft and loves it

   4. The CEO, board, and team all have to be right and at the right time

It’s why he is a multi-billion dollar CMO. 

This kind of superpower is what you want to tap into—something that makes you an undeniable force. The thing that no one can do like you do. But if you've been on the Pirate Ship for a while, you might be wondering…

What's the difference between a POV and a Category Superpower?

Your Category Superpower describes what problem you help solve for people, while your POV frames the problem for them.

A Category Superpower is about you by definition. But the category POV you're building (either for yourself, your company, or your clients) is about customers—their problem, their opportunity. It's actually not about you. And the more it's not about you, the more powerful it is.

That's because customers think like this:

When you market your product, I think you want my money. When you market my problem, I think you want to help me.

Your Category Superpower describes the problem, and your POV frames the problem.

For example, imagine you're in the process of renovating your home. Your home isn't just a building—it's a space where you create memories, find comfort, and share your personal style. Now, let's compare two different types of contractors you might encounter: one is obsessed with their passion, and the other is obsessed with their Category Superpower.

Contractor A: Focused on Themselves

Contractor A comes in with a portfolio of past projects, boasting about their expertise in using the latest materials and cutting-edge designs. They talk (not listen) at length about their work and why they're the “best” in the business. However, they hardly ask about your specific needs or the vision you have for your home. 

Their focus is clearly on showcasing their business rather than understanding your unique situation.

Contractor B: Focused on You

Contractor B, on the other hand, starts by asking you detailed questions about your lifestyle, your family's needs, your design preferences, and the problems you've encountered with your current setup. They listen intently. They take notes. They talk 20% of the time. You talk 80%. They even walk through your space to get a feel for your issues. They then present you with a concept that directly addresses your concerns and makes you say, "Oh, my God! This person gets my problem. I don't even have to explain my problem. As a matter of fact, this person is explaining my problem to me more powerfully than I can explain it to them."

Who would you choose?

Contractor A (despite their "expertise") leaves you feeling like just another customer, but Contractor B makes you feel heard and understood.

Something happens in your brain at that moment of radical relief. You think, "They obviously have the solution. They must. There's no way they are this intimate, this accurate, and this articulate about my problem that nobody else could understand?"

This is the power of your superpower.

Here’s another way to think about it—Superman vs. Spider-Man.

When you think of Superman, you think of:

• Faster than a speeding bullet

• Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound

It’s all about him and his powers!

Now think of Spider-Man, which conjures up:

• Your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man

• With great power, comes great responsibility

It’s all about his impact on others. 

Both are superheroes, but our Piratey push is to get you to articulate your superpower through the lens of your impact on others. 

Here's what that looks like for a few Category Kings:

1. Elon Musk and Tesla

• Category Superpower: Elon Musk's superpower lies in his missionary approach to technology and entrepreneurship, especially in designing the electric vehicles category and sustainable energy solutions with Tesla.

• Category POV: Tesla's category POV is not just about selling electric cars. (They don’t just puke features.) It's about accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy. This POV focuses on solving the global environmental crisis and the need for cleaner, more sustainable transportation options.

2. Steve Jobs and Apple

• Category Superpower: Steve Jobs' superpower was his extraordinary ability to foresee what people would want before they even knew it themselves, combined with a relentless pursuit of design and functional perfection.

• Category POV: Apple's category POV under Jobs was not just about creating computers and gadgets. It was about designing innovative, user-friendly technology that enhances people's lives. This POV focuses on the customer experience and how they use technology in daily life.

3. Satya Nadella and Microsoft

• Category Superpower: Satya Nadella’s superpower is transforming Microsoft’s culture and business model, focusing on cloud computing and open-source technologies.

• Category POV: Microsoft's category POV under Nadella is about empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. This vision is about accessibility, productivity, and leveraging technology to unlock opportunities across markets (like investing in OpenAI).

4. Daniela Simpson & Jeremy Vandervoet and Nestle

• Category Superpower: Daniela and Jeremy were the heads of marketing for Nestle USA’s sugar and chocolate businesses respectively. Their superpower was being mixed martial artist marketers who not only had deep marketing expertise but also depth in new product innovation, finance, supply chain, and strategy. 

• Category POV: Daniela and Jeremy saw confection as stodgy and slow, with form factors and brands that did not change and innovation that was far and few between. They saw (and quantified) the emerging palates that created multiple breakthrough innovations, including a strategy for sugar built around multi-textured innovations (chewy + crunchy). That strategy helped Nestle sell the ~$900MM business to Ferrara for ~$3B. Ferrara took their strategy and executed it excellently with the Nerds brand, which helped the brand grow from $50MM in 2019 to $500MM in 2023 and the #1 brand in US sugar. 

Now, a Category Superpower is not something that you can wish for that you have never done before. You might be able to build a new one going forward. But right now, you're going to focus on your current superpower. 

What massive differences have you made for others? 

Because once you know that, you know what problems you're great at (and enjoy) solving. And once you understand those problems, you’ll start to develop a unique POV and unlock your Category Superpower. 

The Category Superpower Map

This is a tool to visualize how your outcomes, problems, POV, and swagger come together to create your Category Superpower. 

Let's break down each section. 

Your Problems

Uncovering your Category Superpower starts with a problem that needs to be solved, that you know how to solve better than anyone else. 

If you look at your career and your life (what you do for work, what you do around the house, what you do for fun, what you do with friends and family), what do people ask you for help with? What do they call you for? What kind of projects do they ask you to do?

Think about it—you'll see there's a certain problem or type of problem that attracts you.

Here's the kicker:

Most people don't think about other people's problems.

They think about solutions, which are often about themselves. They think about how to be the cheapest, the fastest, the best solution among all the solutions. These folks are mercenaries. They’re trying to be a little better than the thing that already exists, which is why most of them end up competing in Commodity Land. 

To unlock your Category Superpower, the first step is having founder-problem fit. 

That means a problem is personal to you. (For example, our friend Matt Bertulli, Co-Founder and CEO of Lomi cares deeply about trash.) You're consumed by an overwhelming desire to solve the problem—it’s what you absolutely have to do. If you don’t immediately know what that looks like for you, don’t worry.

Continuously run the experiment and ask yourself:

• Why is this problem, or type of problem, showing up in my life? 

• Why am I being asked to work on this problem? 

• Why do I seem to have a capability around the problem that others don't? 

• Is there something about the problem and my ability to help people solve it (or an opportunity and my ability to help people access a new opportunity) where there's real value?

Let's look at Anheuser-Busch, a Category King whose superpower is unique in the industry.

Years ago, the company had signage all over its headquarters that said, “Making Friends is Our Business.” In fact, Anheuser published a book with the same title in 1953 to celebrate the company's 100th anniversary. It’s quite an interesting POV for a beer company. Today, Anheuser-Busch conjures up controversy around Bud Light and craft beer Superconsumers dumping on the quality of its beer. But in reality, light beer and craft beer are two different categories because they solve two different problems. 

Craft beer is about showing off your superior palate and individuality and creating separation from other beer drinkers. 

Light beer is about being easy to drink and easy to drink with others. It's about inclusion and connecting through a common love of sports, the outdoors, humor, and the common man.

Another example is Pirate Christopher's friend Kevin, who might be the world's most legendary handyman. 

They originally met when a window/door store recommended Kevin as the guy who could fix a problem with a sliding door that eluded several other “experts.” After Kevin fixed the door quickly, Pirate Christopher’s wife asked him “What else do you do?” He said, “I can fix anything.” You see, Kevin had always been good with his hands. Over time, he learned many home building, installation, and repair disciplines. But he was never interested in focusing on one trade or another. 

(He’s got some AD/HD and loves problems and puzzles. The harder, the better!)

At first, he thought this was a problem. 

He knew lots about lots, but was not focused in a traditional category like “home builder," “carpenter,” or “window installer.” Over time, Kevin realized that his broad experience (lack of focus) and ability to solve tough problems was not a problem—it was his category superpower. 

Anyone who’s ever owned a home knows that all kinds of problems come up. And "experts" cannot fix some of those problems because they “install” stuff. And when they fix stuff, they fix known problems with known solutions. Kevin fixes complex (weird) problems of any kind that elude most. This makes him radically more valuable as a fix-it Obi-Wan than a traditional crafts person. Decades into his career, Kevin has gained such a powerful reputation that he’s often booked months in advance. Because he is the fix-any-weird problem guy. He’s invaluable—to others.

If you haven't found what problems you're legendary at (and enjoy) solving, keep questioning and experimenting. 

Eventually, you’ll see those problems and the value you create for others by solving them.

Your Outcomes

The outcomes you have historically delivered in your career and life are incredibly important for your Category Superpower.

We want to clarify something here—your outcome isn’t about what you can do, but what you have done. Spiderman can shoot webs and scale tall buildings. That’s not his superpower. (That’s a Spiderman feature.) His superpower is that he saves people. 

As we explain in The Power of Outcomes mini-book, businesses learn very fast that outcomes are non-negotiable. You don’t get a cookie for “doing your best.” This might sound harsh, but it’s the way business works. Effort and intention don’t impact the bottom line. When people need help with something, they’re going to call the person who actually solved the problem, not the person who “did their best.” 

So what do these outcomes look like? 

Financial outcomes are the easiest to think about because they directly impact revenue.

• Planned a Lightning Strike that increased online sales by 30% in six months.

• Improved manufacturing, decreasing production costs by 15% annually.

• Restructured pricing, leading to a 25% increase in profit margins within a year.

• Spearheaded market expansion into Asia, resulting in a 35% increase in international sales.

But there are other kinds of outcomes (emotional, aspirational, organizational, and operational). Maybe you’ve developed new streamlined processes that save your team several hours a week. Maybe you’ve designed a system for talking to and supporting customers that increased the retention rate by 27%. 

Here are a few outcome examples to get your frontal lobe swirling:

Emotional Outcomes

• Introduced a customer feedback system that raised satisfaction scores by 35%.

• Created an employee satisfaction program, reducing turnover by 20% in one year.

• Developed a Superconsumer loyalty program, increasing retention by 40% in six months.

Aspirational Outcomes

• Mentored junior employees, with 5 of them advancing to management positions within 18 months.

• Authored a thought-leadership piece on industry trends that was cited in 20 major publications.

Organizational Outcomes

• Streamlined the client onboarding process, saving the team 15 hours per week.

• Developed and implemented a CRM system that improved customer retention rates by 27%.

• Created a company collaboration framework, increasing project delivery efficiency by 33%.

Operational Outcomes

• Integrated an automated inventory management system that cut inventory costs by 22%.

• Implemented a quality control initiative that reduced production errors by 40%.

• Overhauled project management processes, leading to 95% of projects being completed on time and 10% under budget.

The point is you want to think of a specific outcome you generated that’s authentic to you. You might be thinking, “But I’m not an entrepreneur. I don’t lead a team. I don’t have my own product.” 

You don’t need any of that. 

Outcomes have nothing to do with your job title. 

You don’t need to chase CEO/founder status to have a Category Superpower. 

Let's go back to Sam Altman. Did you know that over 100 people were part of the team that built GPT-4? Sure, Sam led it all. But every single one of those team members played a massive role in how the final product turned out. Each had a distinct ability that contributed to the model's human-level performance.

No matter your role, think about times when you worked directly on something that had a tangible outcome.

Your POV

There’s a problem you understand and enjoy that people keep coming to you for help with. You’re obsessed with solving it. And you have a track record of delivering monster outcomes. But as we explain in our The Power of a Point of View mini-book, you want to look beyond the lens of “let’s just take what we have and make it a little better” to be a Category Designer. That means replacing the lens with something entirely new. 

Your category POV. 

Maybe you already have a good idea of what this is.

(But what do we always say? Thinking about context might be the most important kind of way to START thinking. So think about your category POV again, in the context of the problem you solve and the outcomes you generate.)

Let’s illustrate this with a few POV examples:

• Patagonia: "Buy Less, Demand More." This POV challenges the fast fashion industry by advocating for environmental responsibility and sustainability. To live it out, Patagonia encourages customers to buy fewer higher-quality items. (Think of its Don't Buy This Jacket campaign.) It also demands corporate responsibility, designing the conversation around consumerism and environmental impact.

• Slack: "Where Work Happens." Instead of being just another messaging tool, this POV positions Slack as a workspace hub. It also rejects the premise of how teams collaborate and communicate (email) and offers a different future (productivity platform).

• Duolingo: "Language for All." Duolingo’s POV is about making language learning accessible, fun, and free for everyone. This challenges traditional language education methods (in-person courses, DVD sets, paid apps, etc.) and focuses on making language learning available through technology.

A POV is the script/soundbites customers use in word-of-mouth marketing. These companies leveraged their POVs to design new and different categories—and all are now Category Queens. That’s because Category Designers don’t just try to be a bit better than what already exists. They reject the existing premise because they’re designing a future that looks nothing like the past. And that requires inventing a whole new way to live. 

It also requires something else.

Your Swagger

Swagger is the oomph factor—the force that brings the other three components to life.

This gives Category Designers the confidence to take the leap and get others to take the leap with them. 

For example, when Elisha Otis designed the safety elevator brake, buildings only had four floors. Anything taller was a safety risk. Elevator crashes often caused serious injuries, even death. Elisha envisioned a new world of possibilities with his invention, but he had to bring people into that future with him. 

So, he relied on Languaging to put into terms people could understand.

He described the safety elevator as a “vertical railway.” 

People understood what a railway was and how it moved products and people from place to place across the country. And Elisha would say something like, “Well, now you can do it up and down.”  

(BTW: Without Mr. Otis, there would be no tall buildings—never mind skyscrapers. New categories create more new categories. Oh, and the next time you’re in an elevator, look at the floor. Chances are you’ll see the Otis logo. Elisha designed the category in 1853, and his company is still the category leader…ARRRRR! ☠️)

It takes a tremendous amount of swagger to stand in a different future. 

For Elisha to say something like "safety elevators are going to enable an entirely new kind of building, which will create an entirely new kind of city" is as outrageous a thing as any Category Designer could possibly say. 

But he did it. 

(Everything is the way that it is, because somebody changed the way it was.)

We have no doubt that part of his confidence came from building a legendary product. Part of it came from solving a problem that most other people couldn't see. And the other part was being able to muster the courage and say, "This is the future of how we're going to build buildings."

Now to be clear, swagger on its own isn’t good. 

If you’re arrogant and showing off for the sake of it, that just makes you what punk rockers call a “poser.”

But if you solve a problem for others, have a record of generating outcomes, and design a new and different category POV, you should have confidence in yourself. All you need is swagger. Without it, you'll likely fall short of your potential.

Your Category Superpower needs all four components to work.

Like the Magic Triangle that needs all three sides to create a new and different category, your Category Superpower lies at the intersection of your outcomes, problems, POV, and swagger. 

Find that intersection, and you’ll be unstoppable. 

Let’s go back to Nerds, Nestle, Daniela, and Jeremy. 

A little over 10 years ago, Pirate Eddie was brought into Nestle USA to build a portfolio strategy for its chocolate and sugar business with Daniela and Jeremy. His team assessed the current state and found the following: 

Problem: The portfolio was complex with over two dozen sub-scale brands.

• Nestle USA had 35% of the brands, but only 9% of the category revenue

• The total portfolio was a distant #4 in the US and not growing

• Fixed costs were not covered and had weak profits

• The ‘revenue prevention department’ was strong!

Outcomes: Daniela and Jeremy had a strong track record of innovation.

• Jeremy launched Butterfinger Cups, which was >$75MM in sales in Year 1

• Daniela launched SweeTart Ropes, one of the biggest innovations in sugar

POV: Their innovations were predicated on a few key insights.

• The category was strong at $20B in sales and growing

• Much of the growth came from multi-textured brands vs. single-texture

  1. Reese’s was the #1 brand in US chocolate with peanut butter

  2. M&M was #2 with candy shell and chocolate

  3. Snickers was #3 with peanuts, caramel, and chocolate

• There was an odd dynamic where brands did not compete across forms

  1. Hershey Kisses didn’t have a form factor competitor

  2. Snickers didn’t have a form factor competitor

  3. Kit Kat didn’t have a form factor competitor

So Daniela and Jeremy focused on the first two insights and rejected the premise of the third insight.

Swagger: Nestle USA did not have swagger, but another company did.

Nestle literally created the category in 1875 when Henri Nestle and Daniel Peter created the world’s first commercial milk chocolate. But Nestle did not love its US portfolio! One of Nestle’s key global brands was on a 100-year license to Hershey (oops), and the remaining chocolate brands (e.g., Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Crunch) were local brands without global scale.

Why? 

Because sugar was scary. 👻

Daniela and Jeremy realized that its sugar brands, Nerds and SweeTarts, had much higher profit and scale upside. But the company was fearful sugar would be the next tobacco. So Daniela & Jeremy led the process to sell Nestle USA’s confection. They led the business case and upside for sugar in particular

Nestle sold the business to Ferrara for $2.8B in cash, nearly 3x sales!

Ferrara LOVED the sugar category and had plenty of swagger

• Ferrara had amazing sugar supply chain capabilities…

• …but lacked iconic brands like Nerds and SweeTarts

• They invested heavily and grew the business to $500MM in sales

As a result, Ferrara now has the #1 sugar brand in the entire category, surpassing Skittles, Life Savers, Starbursts, Twizzlers, and Sour Patch Kids. 

That’s real swagger.

And it's what you need to step into your superpower.

Here’s how to put the pieces together.

• Problems: What are the problems you’re in love with? What problems are you pumped every day to find solutions to?

• Outcomes: What are the outcomes you’ve delivered over the course of your career? Is yours a financial outcome? An organizational outcome? Maybe even an emotional outcome?

• POV: This is the connection between the problem and the outcome—the common themes and patterns that allow the problem to turn into an outcome. A unique POV allows you to bend time and go from problem to the outcome much, much faster, because you've seen what it looks like.

• Swagger: Confidence, not arrogance. You’re confident about solving this problem, not only because you've done it before, but because you’re in love with the problem, because of the outcomes that you've generated, and because your POV is super powerful. 

We recommend you fill in each of the boxes. If you’re having trouble, here’s an easy way to work on both problems and outcomes at the same time. 

1. Start by figuring out the outcomes that you’ve generated. 

2. Reverse engineer the underlying problem that you solved to generate that outcome. 

3. Once you figure that out, you'll begin to see the patterns of what the problem looks like and how your solution was able to create that outcome. 

4. You'll then see similar underlying problems in other situations and be able to generate outcomes there too.

Once you fill out the above template, answer the following questions to combine your outcomes, problems, POV, and swagger into a short description. 

Identify Your Unique Strength (Category Superpower)

• What is your unique ability or approach? This could be a specific skill, a novel way of thinking, or a unique approach to problems.

• How does this ability create value or solve problems? Consider the impact of your ability on your environment, industry, or audience.

Define Your Impactful Vision (Category POV)

• What larger problem or opportunity are you addressing? Think about the broader implications or the bigger picture of what you are doing.

• How does your approach redefine or challenge the conventional understanding of this problem or opportunity? This is about framing your vision in a way that sets you apart and makes a broader statement about your impact.

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Want to share your Category Superpower or have us workshop one for Part 2 of this mini-book? Add a comment at the end. 👇

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Now for a (wildly) different idea…

What if your greatest “bugs” are your most legendary superpowers?

You know that problem about you, that shortcoming of yours. The thing people have told you to fix or improve. What if it’s a superpower, not a bug? 

Handyman Kevin was told his lack of focus was a problem. He rejected the premise. He learned that his different (interest in problem solving) was in fact his superpower. His different is how he makes the biggest difference to others.

Pirate Christopher was told (countless times) that he needed a GED and an MBA to succeed. Neither was an option for him, given his nero-different brain. He has AD/HD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, and executive function disorder. Most people call these differences “disorders.” The state of California classifies Pirate Christopher and the 20% of the population like him as “disabled.”

F-that.

Pirate Christoper rejects the premise and follows his different. He started his first company at 18 years old in Montreal, Canada. By 28, he was a millionaire head of marketing for a publicly traded software company in Silicon Valley. He then retired as a three-time public tech company CMO at 38. 

What if that thing people say is “wrong” with you is your different superpower that unlocks massive value?

What if your “liabilities” are legendary assets? 

We beg you, please. Pretty please with whisky on top. Do some reflective thinking on this.

Don’t “find” your way. Make your way.

The vast majority of life advice tells you to find your path. We're taught “your real life is out there if you just search for your passion long enough” by hustle pornstars, self-help gurus, and influencer morons slinging recycled motivational garbagē. 

But here’s the thing: Your perfect life won’t just fall into your lap.

And by wanting it to, you’re putting the onus on the world to save you. 

As a Category Designer, you're responsible for designing your life. 

That’s actually incredibly freeing because you get to make it whatever you want. You get to identify and fulfill the one purpose you were put on this earth for. By stepping into your Category Superpower, you’re choosing to combine your outcomes, problems, POV, and swagger into something that you deploy for others. 

You’re not getting bit by a radioactive spider. You’re not “born” into the power. You build it yourself through the actions you take.

You have the power.

There’s something inside you that the whole world is dying to have.

Unlock it, and you’ll be unstoppable.

Arrrrrrr,

Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️

Eddie Yoon

Christopher Lochhead

Katrina Kirsch

PS: Help others “think different.”

If reading this opened your mind to new and different thinking, share it with a friend so others can learn about Category Pirates.

PPS: Have a question or pirate-y thought?

Reply to this email, or let us know in a comment.