Find Your Business Bandmates: The Playbook For Finding Partners Who Share Your Mission & Grow Your Impact

And 11 nightmare collaborators to avoid at all costs.

Arrrrr! 🏴‍☠️ Welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of Category Pirates. Each week, we share radically different ideas to help you design new and different categories. For more: View the mini-book archive | Listen to a category design jam session | Dive into an audiobook | Enroll in the free Strategy Sprint email course

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Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,

Legendary bands don’t make it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame through individual talent alone.

Imagine Mick Jagger going solo without Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts. Or Freddie Mercury trying to lead Queen without Brian May, John Deacon, and Roger Taylor. Their magic comes from chemistry, trust, and complementary superpowers.

The same is true in business.

Whether you're running your own business or designing the next Category Queen company, the people you surround yourself with — your business bandmates — can make or break your ability to create something legendary.

Here’s the a-ha: Finding the right bandmates isn’t just about talent or credentials.

It’s about alignment, shared missions, complementary skills, and the ability to jam without someone constantly playing out of tune.

As Pirate Eddie learned as a senior partner at The Cambridge Group, the right bandmates can elevate your work to Category King status. (Ever wonder why Bud Light Lime became a hit? That’s the power of great collaboration.) When the chemistry is right, the results can be exponential.

Just think of iconic duos like:

• Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers (Shondaland): A visionary storyteller meets a strategic producer, creating an empire of groundbreaking TV.

• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Apple): A marketing innovator and an engineering mastermind team up to redefine personal computing.

• Sara Blakely and Laurie Ann Goldman (Spanx): A visionary founder pairs with an operational expert to scale a billion-dollar Category Queen.

• Ruth Handler and Charlotte Johnson (Barbie): A dreamer collaborates with a creative fashion designer to make a doll that becomes a cultural icon.

• Walt and Roy Disney (The Walt Disney Company): A creative dreamer unites with a financial strategist to build an entertainment empire.

And when the tune is off? Well, it’s painful. And you’ll be wishing for a solo act.

If you’re serious about building a business that lasts, this mini-book is your backstage pass to assembling the band of your dreams.

In this mini-book, you’ll discover:

• How to spot legendary business bandmates (and the 11 nightmare archetypes to avoid at all costs)

• What to look for in long-term partnerships — and the serendipitous story of how Category Pirates was founded

• A 100-point scorecard to assess potential collaborators (and yourself)

In business, just like in music, it’s never just about the solo. And when you’re designing a category, your bandmates will determine whether you go platinum… or fizzle out in a dive bar.

Let’s jam. 🎸

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🔊 Want to listen to this mini-book instead? Head to the audiobook.

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Find Your Business Bandmates: Why It Can Be Nirvana Or A Nightmare

In the Permission To Play mini-book, we highlighted the importance of play in business.

But in order to play, you have to find the right bandmates to jam with.

Having spent nearly two decades at The Cambridge Group, Pirate Eddie worked with many teams. Most were traditional consulting hierarchies. But for high-stakes clients, the approach shifted.

The Anheuser-Busch Band

In 2006, Anheuser-Busch turned to The Cambridge Group after a bruising price war had cut their operating profits by nearly 10%.

Pirate Eddie and his peer, Mark Henneman, were chosen to lead the mission-critical project. Mark, a seasoned expert in retail operations and supply chain, had the perfect resume for the job. He was known as the smartest man at Booz Allen Hamilton and had led major merger integrations across global markets.

Pirate Eddie, on the other hand, had no experience in the beer industry — but he brought a superpower Mark didn’t: Category Design.

Recognizing this, Mark deferred the leadership role to Eddie.

Together, they complemented each other’s strengths. Eddie envisioned a bold future for Anheuser’s growth, while Mark ensured the strategies were operationally sound. It was a symphony of shared genius. Eddie would riff on a category design idea, and if Mark didn’t “join the jam,” Eddie knew it needed refinement.

Their work created Palate Mapping, a proprietary methodology that analyzed taste, texture, and brand appeal to uncover Non-Obvious patterns. This led to category-creating products like Bud Light Lime and Lime-a-Rita, which allowed Anheuser to grow without needing to acquire spirits brands.

The result? A $6 million consulting engagement that unlocked over $1.5 billion in revenue at a 30% price premium.

The work was incredibly fun.

All the junior consultants wanted to be part of the Anheuser team. (In fact, the Anheuser project’s success and relationship were some of the key attractions that led Nielsen to acquire The Cambridge Group.)

For Eddie, this collaboration was one of the most rewarding of his career.

But as the Anheuser team grew, new partners lacked the same complementary spark. Internal competition replaced collaboration. The new partners wore on Pirate Eddie and drained him of energy. After one excruciating conversation, he nearly quit on the spot. He eventually stepped away to focus on writing Superconsumers and launching his own consulting practice. Mark went on to lead Accenture’s Consumer Strategy practice, while the remaining team struggled to sustain Anheuser’s exponential growth.

Said differently: The band broke up.

The remaining partners could not generate client outcomes and relationships on their own. They wanted to repeat the past, not play with the future. They were more interested in credit versus creating. They cared more about their outcomes versus the client's outcomes.

The Anheuser story illustrates a truth:

Legendary outcomes require legendary bandmates.

When the chemistry is right, 1 + 1 = 1.5 billion. But when it’s off, even great work can fall flat.

Anheuser was both the most fun and most draining client experience Pirate Eddie had. But it had far more to do with the bandmates than anything else. When Pirate Eddie left to go solo, it was in part because he thought it would be too hard to find the right bandmates to play with.

We’ll share how to find the “right” bandmates later in the mini-book.

But for now, let’s break down what you want to avoid.

11 Nightmare Bandmates To Avoid At All Costs