Category Pirates ads

My name’s “IRON” Mike Steadman and I’m a proud alumni of Category Pirates In 2023, I participated in Cohort One of the Category Design Academy with Christopher Lochhead and Eddie Yoon. Today, I have the privilege of calling them friends and mentors. At the time, I had one goal in mind. Establish myself as the premier category designer for veteran entrepreneurs, helping them frame, name, and claim categories they can actually win. I first started dabbling in category design in 2020 after reading Play Bigger. For years, I used podcasting as the Trojan horse to teach it. Then in 2024, I made the decision to lead with it. But knowing the theory and actually doing the work are two different things. I spent a year inside the Category Design Academy refining my thinking, building my own frameworks, and sparring with other pirates. For me, the Academy was Apollo Creed’s gym in Rocky III. If you know, you know. It gave me the foundation and confidence I needed to go all in. I don’t have an Ivy League MBA. I never went through a coaching certification program. I’m not a product marketing guru. I’m a MisFit and a Category Pirate. Today, I’m pioneering the category of Adversarial GTM through my firm OP4. Adversarial GTM is a go-to-market methodology that treats the market as an opposing force, one that rewards clarity and punishes confusion. It starts from a different premise. Not, how do we communicate our value. But, what will the market actually hear, and is that enough to survive contact? The methodology is structured around three laws: Law 1: Category clarity is a weapon. Confused buyers do not consider. They disappear. If your value prop cannot survive without you in the room, you have already lost. Law 2: The market is the test. Not your investors. Not your team. Not your internal consensus. The market is the only place where strategy becomes real. Everything before contact is rehearsal. Law 3: Movement requires contact. You cannot pressure test your GTM from the inside. Doctrine that has not been tested by opposition is not doctrine. It is assumption. These are not principles to consider. They are the conditions under which any go-to-market motion either survives or collapses. I gained the confidence to roll out my own category and help others design theirs, inside the CDA. Applications are open for the next cohort starting April 27th. If you’re an aspiring Category Designer, apply! Special shoutout to Bri Clark. Also, special shoutout to Faherty Brand. This shirt is part of their Goodfeather collection, honoring Doug Good Feather, a fellow Veteran, Artist, and Teacher.

We are fortunate when people come into our lives who transform us and help shape our career journeys. The Category Design Academy is that experience for me. In corporate life, we often measure success by revenue targets, launch metrics, or awards we win. That value belongs to the company. However, when you’re a solopreneur, it’s easy to get stuck, pondering your own value. We can work on pricing and articulate the value of our clients' products, but when we have to think about our own value, it can be hard and uncomfortable, as all pricing usually is. "But you’re valuable beyond what you believe yourself to be." -Category Pirates I still remember Lesson 3: Price For Outcomes. That’s where the unlock happened for me, and when I started to understand the “Value of Your Value.” It’s a phrase I often repeat to myself. We had to map out the outcomes we’ve delivered - the massive difference we’ve made for others. Not the effort you put in, not how hard you worked, not your intentions. The actual tangible shift that happens because of what you did. And as I wrote each outcome, I saw the pattern. The revenue I built. The communities I scaled. The categories I created. I wasn't just executing someone else's playbook. I was designing it, building the GTM strategy, architecting categories, turning data into action. For the first time, I could see my actual superpower: the storyteller, the builder, the revenue scientist. Your outcomes are your value. I went from trading hours to trading outcomes, sharpened my POV, named the problem I solve, and my category…Legal Tech Revenue Science™️. And then Nick Kringas, my academy classmate, called me one day with something different. He was building a new category for personal injury law firms and we joined forces to help lawyers navigate the AI Visibility Reset and answer the urgent question: Is your law firm AI invisible? That one question changed everything. While attending a conference, attorneys came to our booth, listened, and started saying it back to us. We did visibility audits, shared data, and our system to be recommended by AI. Our story is captured in Creator Capitalist, Chapter 14: Find Your Bandmates. This is one of my proudest moments to be featured alongside my incredible friend and business partner. I've learned from the legendary Christopher Lochhead, Eddie Yoon and Bri Clark. It connected me with Nick and a community of the most brilliant thinkers that are my friends. And if you're standing where I once stood - stuck, uncertain, wondering what your superpower is - the Academy doesn't just teach you category design. It helps you design the Category of YOU. The Academy helped me take 30 years of outcomes and build something of my own. It's the best investment I've made in myself and changed my life. If you're ready to unlock the value of your value, join the next cohort. Applications close on April 27. https://lnkd.in/gn8Xu5Yu #categorydesign #GTM #legaltech #personalinjurylaw

Some weeks make you stop. Really stop. I attended the funeral of a friend and former colleague on Friday, her light taken way too early. A brilliant, whip smart leader who brought connectivity literacy into agricultural policy and advocacy. She didn't just work in ag. She moved the dial for an entire sector. That is legacy. It made me think hard about ours. At Connected Farms, we sit at the intersection of something most people walk straight past — agricultural connectivity. Not the shiny stuff. The foundational plumbing of the modern farm. The link between what happens in a paddock and what gets decided in a boardroom or a grain terminal. We are deeply niche. Like a specialist surgeon that focuses on one part of one area of the body. And in the early days, I wasn't sure whether that depth was our greatest strength or our biggest limitation. Then I joined the Category Pirates Category Design Academy. I walked into that first jam session carrying a lifetime of entrepreneurial grit but zero Silicon Valley credentials. High achievers. Big thinkers. Industry legends. I leaned in. Voice quiet. Brain absolutely on fire. The Academy gave me the language and the lens to own the legacy we were already building at Connected Farms. The Category Pirates celebrated our depth. Connected Agriculture isn't a feature of the agriculture sector. It is a category. And once you truly understand category design, you stop trying to compete and start creating. You stop apologising for being niche and start leading because of it. In June we're at Cereals Event UK alongside Amazon Leo, demonstrating the uplift connectivity brings to working farms. We are sought out to consult on connectivity with global OEM and robotics companies. We're chasing funding to fuel our global growth. We are deep in our category. Clarity sharpened by the framework I built inside the Academy. It's important to me that the legacy we are building isn't just about enabling technology. It's about every grower who finally has the data they need. Every agronomist with visibility across a whole farm. Every government body that understands what connectivity means for food and fibre security. When you go deep in your category, you build more than a business. You build a body of work that outlives the moment. Being a #CertifiedCategoryDesigner has opened so many doors. In my thinking, in my capacity as a leader, and importantly doors of meaningful connection. If you've been circling the idea of going deeper on your category, Category Design Academy Cohort 4 is open now. It won't just change how you think about your business. It will change how you think about your legacy. 👉 If you want the unlock that Category Design can bring, join the next Academy. DM me or reach out to Christopher Lochhead Eddie Yoon Bri Clark directly for info. #CategoryDesign #ConnectedAgriculture #AgriTech #CertifiedCategoryDesigner #CategoryDesignAcademy #Leadership #Legacy #ConnectedFarms

𝗜 𝗔𝗹𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗪𝗮𝗹𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗔𝘄𝗮𝘆 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝗠𝘆 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱. There have been times in my marketing career when I questioned my gift so much that I considered leaving marketing altogether. Not because I wasn’t good at what I do, but because I didn’t feel like I fit into how marketing and strategy were supposed to look. I didn’t follow the same playbooks, and I didn’t approach conversations the same way. For a while, I thought that meant I needed to adjust. A few years ago, I joined the first cohort of the Category Design Academy, and that experience changed the trajectory of my business. Not because it gave me a better process, but because it challenged how I was thinking. It pushed me to question what is accepted by the masses and to trust that thinking differently was not a weakness; it was the value. What I have come to understand is that my strength is not just in building strategy. It’s in how I work with people. I create a space where business owners feel safe and know their honesty and vulnerability will help them achieve their business’ potential. That is why we go well beyond surface-level honesty. We get to the true truth about what is not working, what they actually want, and what feels off in their business, even if they cannot fully explain it yet. There are moments in these conversations where things slow down and something real comes up. The answer is not immediate, and it is not always comfortable. That is usually the moment most people move past. But I am not most people. I stay there, in the uncomfortable, and guide my clients through it, because that is where the clarity is. I have joked before that it feels like business therapy or marketing therapy, but what it really is, is getting to the root of things. Understanding the problem they actually solve, what they believe in, who they want to serve and will go all in for, and what fulfills them. That becomes the foundation. And when that foundation is clear, everything else starts to align. The message becomes easier to articulate, the strategy becomes more focused, and the right people start to recognize themselves in the business. If I had not been pushed to question everything I thought I needed to be, I don’t think I would do this work the way I do today. And I don’t think my clients would get the same results in the same shortened time frame. This work requires a level of honesty that can feel uncomfortable, but it is also what makes the difference. So mahalo to the Category Pirates, Eddie Yoon, Christopher Lochhead, and Bri Clark for sharing so much knowledge and encouragement to be different, to think about thinking, and helping me see just how legendary I can be. When you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. Entrepreneurship has its challenges for sure, and in my 8 years of business, I love going to work every single day. #CategoryPirates #BeLegendary #BusinessClarity #EntrepreneurGrowth #WOYB

A quick story about finding your category. Before the reframe For two years I pitched SKOR as a "team performance assessment." Every conversation was the same. "How is this different from Engagement Surveys or eNPS?" "We already do engagement surveys." "Sounds interesting, send me info." Then silence. I was competing in a category I didn't belong in. And losing. I knew the product worked — companies were uncovering blind spots they'd never seen and changing how they led their teams. But the positioning was wrong. I was describing what SKOR does instead of what it finds. During the shift I joined the Category Design Academy five months ago. Eddie Yoon, who I have known for over 10 years, helped me see what was right in front of me. I then shifted it to SKOR, finding the "hidden profits" in your teams. He pushed back — profits aren't hiding, they're leaking. Every day. From every team. And nobody's measuring it. That one word changed everything. SKOR isn't an assessment. It's a Profit Leak Diagnostic. It puts a dollar figure on what team dysfunction is actually costing a company — and most leaders have no idea the number exists. Same product. Completely different category. After the reframe The conversations changed overnight. CFOs lean in. CHROs stop comparing us to engagement surveys. The question shifted from "how is this different?" to "what's our number?" We went from competing in a crowded red ocean of HR tech to owning a category of one — the only diagnostic that connects team dynamics to a Profit Leak Number. If you're a founder stuck explaining how you're "different but better" — you're in the wrong category. Stop competing. Start designing. Grateful to Eddie Yoon, Christopher Lochhead, and Category Pirates for helping me see it. You won't regret signing up to the next cohort - don't be a fool! https://lnkd.in/eFPRv-uz

The insurance and collision industry doesn't have a talent crisis. It has a design failure. There's a generation of adjusters, appraisers, and estimators who built this industry from scratch. I call them the Fossil Workforce. They weren't trained. They were shaped. Time in the seat. Pressure from carriers, shops, and claimants. Years of feedback that was sometimes a mentor and sometimes just a bad estimate getting kicked back. That's how the entire knowledge base of our industry was built. Informally. Inconsistently. Invisibly. And right now, one in four of them retires by 2027. I've spent the last decade helping new adjusters and estimators break into this industry through IA Path. The question I kept running into wasn't "how do we train more people." It was bigger. Why is the industry pipeline broken? Category Pirates, and specifically the work I did inside Category Design Academy, helped me name what I was actually building. The category isn't "adjuster training." It's the Renewable Auto Estimating Workforce. The fossil workforce was built by time and pressure. The renewable workforce is built by design. And the measurement that makes it real is called the Contribution Standard. Not what you know. What you can contribute from day one. That one distinction changes who can enter this career, how fast they can do it, and what happens to this industry when the fossil workforce finally walks out the door. We are making the career available to more people. That's the category. That's the work.... and its far from over. Thanks to the Category Pirates Christopher Lochhead Eddie Yoon Bri Clark, thank you for working with all of us and not giving up on anyone and always making me think.