Master Category Design, the most valuable (underground) skill in business

The Category Design Academy is the first business training community that teaches you how to apply category design principles to your career and company.

You’ll join a group of entrepreneurs, executives, consultants, and creators learning to design a unique point of view, attract their Superconsumers, and own new markets. You’ll get into the “dojo" to build category design skills. You'll spar with different ways of thinking. And you'll be cheered on by a crew of inspiring peers.

By the end, you'll transform into the category designer you're meant to be.

Apply for the Fall 2025 cohort

The Category Design Academy is an investment in yourself, your business, & your future.

When you check out a digital learning program, you want to know how much it costs.

But most marketing copywriters were taught to bury the price at the bottom of the page. (As if playing hide and seek with price is something that customers like!) So, let’s make it clear.

The training
program and community
is $10,000 US.

You might be thinking,

"Wow, pirates! That's a great deal for training created from decades of category design consulting and advising experience that's produced billions in revenue for dozens of Fortune 100 companies and over 50 venture-backed startups."

But if you just had a heart attack because that sounds like $9,999 too much, we understand.

You can instead check out our books, top 10 paid business newsletter, free podcasts, the 100% free Strategy Sprint email course, or the $1k Strategy Therapy course.

But if you’re ready to make a massive difference, read on.

Who is the Category Design Academy for?

The Category Design Academy is best for current and aspiring category designers who want exponential professional and financial outcomes for themselves and their clients.

If you consistently deliver massive outcomes but are stuck on “per hour” or “per project” pricing, you don't realize your power. When you find your “per outcome” price, you elevate from just another consultant to a “must-have” category designer. This is the secret to landing higher-quality clients, raising your rates, and developing your reputation—and we show you how.

Have you always felt your approach to business is “different”?

Are you unsure if your different is a superpower? Does positioning yourself, pitching your offer, and managing client scope seem overwhelming? Let’s fix that.

Do you know how to stand out and find loyal clients?

Are you worried about having to “go back” to a normal 9-5 job that doesn’t excite you? Are you tired of chasing low-paying clients who ghost you? We can help.

Are you charging the right price for the value you provide?

Do you know how much you're worth? Are you frustrated with finding the balance between not too little and not too much? Learn your value and up your prices.

What Our Members Are Saying

Adam Frankl, Founder of The Developer-Facing Startup Academy

"I'm a Superconsumer of online courses, but the Category Design Academy is different. What I love about the Academy is that we have a diverse set of people with a common problem that we all want to help each other solve."

Holley Proctor Miller, Founder of Grey Matter Marketing

"The Category Design Academy has exceeded my expectations on every possible dimension. It's a special group of like-minded people, even though you might be doing very different industries and very different offerings. To have someone go deep with you and be a sounding board has been incredible."

Carylyne Chan, Co-Founder & Angel Investor

"The Academy has been an exceptional way to solidify knowledge from reading the books and mini-books. The step-by-step workbook exercises, and weekly videos, have given me some fresh perspectives on various concepts + actionable items. So far, I've used the Magic Triangle and many of the category design principles to talk two new superstar clients through redesigning their categories and companies. The impact has been really great for them. I definitely attribute being able to close them quickly, and advise them well, to some of the techniques I learned from the Academy!"

Danny Bauer, Chief Ruckus Maker at Better Leaders Better Schools

"I think this is probably the best investment I've made in myself. So far, that's the way it feels. I'm seeing a different response in the marketplace in terms of putting the message out there and speaking to my ideal Superconsumers. I feel so good sharing the message, and I could see the light bulb go on in the faces of those that I serve too."

"IRON" Mike Steadman, Founder of The MisFits

"I was on team struggle bus when I entered the Academy. I had clients that were rolling off. I had a big gap in terms of signing new clients too. And I had an empty pipeline. But what I discovered is that all my clients are actually launching brands. So they're going from zero to 100, and they wanna do it with someone that they trust. I got a new swagger now because I just feel so comfortable and competent launching these new brands. Because I know as much as it's a brand play, it's also very much a category play. I was calling Christopher all week, 'cause I kept closing clients."

Pablo Gonzalez, Founder of Be The Stage

“I'm a guy that's been completely chugging the category design Kool-Aid since the moment that I read any of your guys' work. I've known it's the right decision—I've just been terrified to do it. When we talked about how consultants are “balls for rent,” it hit me with a ton of bricks. I'm going to use this, I'm going to go for it. I've fully, fully embraced it, and it's really worked out. This will be the year that I make the most money I have ever made in my life.”

Apply to the Category Design Academy

Our Different Approach

Most people don't know how to look at their careers from an outcome lens.

→ What did you actually do for somebody who paid for your time and services?
→ How did you meaningfully transform their lives?
→ Did you help them financially, emotionally, or aspirationally?

Inside the Academy, you’ll be forced to think about how others have experienced your outcomes.

This is how you go from being “someone who believes in category design” to getting paid as a Category Designer. To do that, you'll go through specialized training:

Month 1
Uncover Your Category Superpower

Decide What You Will Be Remembered For, Then Follow Your Different

Month 2
Price For Outcomes

Leverage Good-Better-Best Pricing Strategies, From Free to 10x Your Current Offer

Month 3
Master The No Sell Sell

How to Get Clients to Come to You, Instead of You Chasing After Them

Month 4
Leverage Languaging

How to Communicate Your Value and Change the Way Others Think

Month 5
Find Your Superconsumers

Attract Meaningful and Valuable Clients Through Different Thought Leadership

Month 6
Create a Sales Funnel Strategy

Mastering the 2x4x8 Framework to Drive Deals and Meaningful Growth

Month 7
Elevate Your Pitch

How to Create Simple and Powerful Proposals That Win Deals

Month 8
Run Legendary Meetings

Hold Effective Meetings That Wow Clients and Build Your Reputation

Month 9
Drive Meaningful Outcomes

Launch Your Clients (and Yourself) to Legendary Category Success

Month 10
Control Your Scope

Navigate Scope Creep and Overcome Common Consulting Challenges

BONUS Month 11
Know When to Walk Away

The Power of Strategic Exits and New Opportunities

BONUS Month 12
Own Your Category

Create A Positive, Self-Perpetuating Word-of-Mouth Flywheel

Master category design skills—from finding your Superconsumers to increasing your pricing by 10x.

Inside the Academy, you'll get everything you need to achieve professional, personal, and financial success as a Category Designer. Specifically, we train you on how to language, price, and pitch your category design services to CEOs & business owners in your industry. 

This program covers everything you’ll need to:

Establish your unique Category Superpower & POV

Attract your Superconsumer clients

Pitch, sell, and scale your services

Launch a Lightning Strike to build word of mouth

And so much more

Here are a few resources you'll have exclusive access to in the Category Design Academy:

🥊 Category Design Training

Participate in at-your-own-pace lessons that dive deep into fundamental areas of category design consulting. Join discussions during and after training sessions, and share insights with fellow pirates to bulk up your category design skills.

💎 Proven Frameworks & Strategies

You’ll come to understand battle-tested frameworks that have reshaped industries and unleashed exponential growth. And you'll start to apply those in real life—with encouragement and feedback along the way.

🏋 Weekly Exercises & Actionable Feedback

Theory alone won't unlock the treasure troves of category design consulting. You’ll engage in hands-on exercises that plunge you into the tactics, honing your skills and developing a deep understanding of the art. You'll receive constructive feedback to help you master core concepts.

☠️ Live Workshops & Mentoring

Get personalized guidance from live workshops and mentoring sessions with the Category Pirates. These will help you navigate any challenges and seize the opportunities that lie ahead.

🌊 Superconsumers Deep Dive

Who are your most valuable clients? How can you identify them? And how can you create offers, specifically for them, to exponentially increase revenue immediately? You'll figure out the answers (and actions to take) in the Category Design Academy.

⛵ Pirate Crew Connections

Surround yourself with other radically different thinkers who inspire you. You'll be responsible for holding each other accountable, sharing leads, and coaching each other up so you all can perfect your craft. You may very well meet your next co-founder, business partner, or client!

How You’ll Sharpen Your Skills

You’ll collaborate with fellow crew members, spar with industry category designers, and hone your skills through weekly exercises and live workshops.

1. Training Videos

Weekly Pirate-led training videos will guide you through category design topics. Get the knowledge and skills you need to conquer the world of category design consulting, like mastering the No-Sell Sell, achieving client outcomes, and more.

2. Exercises & Feedback

You’ll be assigned hands-on exercises to develop practical skills, like pitching your POV, elevating your pricing, and controlling your scope. You’ll get feedback on your work from your peers, us Pirates, and seasoned category designers.

3. Workshops & Events

Take part in workshops and live events to prepare for real-world scenarios. These sessions will let you practice with other category designers to hone your skills, while we Pirates will share our knowledge and help prepare you for client work.

Apply to the Category Design Academy

The next cohort begins on November 4th, 2024

You'll experience transformative changes in your career and life.

Joining this cohort means you'll be fully prepared to seize opportunities in the coming year. We limit cohorts to a small group of motivated and outcome-oriented people.

Apply to the Category Design Academy

Connect With Legendary Thinkers

Surround yourself with business leaders, aspiring consultants, and seasoned Category Designers. Our hope is that if you have felt “different” all your life, you’ll feel right at home here.

🦜 Consultants

To be a successful consultant, advisor, or contractor, you must become known for a niche you own. We’ll show you how you can apply Category Design principles to attract clients and charge based on outcomes—not hours.

🎸 Founders

Our members range from CEOs running million-dollar businesses to a small "e" entreprenuers. Both groups have value, and we believe Category Design is not exclusive to any one type of business.

💼 Executives

Tired of joining online groups or masterminds full of buzzword-spewing gurus? You won’t find any of that in the Category Design Academy. Just radically different thinkers looking to make a giant, positive impact on the world.

Apply to join the Category Design Academy waitlist

Why do people struggle to become great Category Design consultants?

There are 5 main challenges people run into when making the switch from a traditional 9-5 job.

Challenge #1

Consulting greatness requires a long-term commitment—it’s not something you do between jobs. It demands a bold, unwavering commitment. So, it’s important to immerse yourself in a lifelong quest for knowledge and skills. This lets you be in sync with your clients, anticipating their every move and emerging as their most indispensable partner.

Challenge #2

Clients often see consulting as a transactional service—they want to buy time for money. But this is the lowest value offer. What you truly need is a partnership focused on outcomes, instead of just time or processes. Great consultants sell outcomes for money.

Challenge #3

Scaling a consulting business can be challenging, and it often requires navigating difficult hurdles. You have to know how to manage your time and energy, find and maintain clients, and keep your quality consistent as you scale. This requires careful planning, adaptability, and perseverance.

Challenge #4

Being a solopreneur consultant involves various challenges, including finding clients, marketing, negotiating contracts, managing scope creep, delivering exceptional outcomes, and handling financial aspects.

Challenge #5

While cash flow is important, the true wealth-building potential of being a category design consultant lies in equity ownership. So, you have to know how to work equity into your deals. This is how you scale your business up to (and beyond) 7 figures and find opportunities for substantial financial growth. 

Learn How to Learn, Pirate-Style

Category design isn't for everyone. But once you "get" it, you’ll forever have a different lens on business and life. That's because it's not just a business strategy—it’s a way to design the future.

Being a category design
consultant is one of the most clarifying business experiences you can have.

It forces you to know:

• What is your unique superpower?
• What outcomes do you drive?
• What can you charge for it?

You're pitching the purest version of yourself.

Knowing this will make you 10x more powerful as an executive, consultant, and creator.

We Category Pirates have all been executives, entrepreneurs, creators, and consultants.

We believe that even if consulting is not your day job, you should always have YOUR NAME, LLC running in the background and ready to go. Nothing accelerates your learning like consulting. And having your own company as a fallback will give you the courage to go for it as an executive, entrepreneur, or creator. 

Get ready to push the boundaries of conventional thinking and price based on your value.

Apply to the Category Design Academy

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does this cost?

Our goal with the Category Design Academy is to make starting and running your own category design consulting business accessible.

MBA programs cost upwards of $80,000 per year, and exclusive masterminds charge $15,000+ to help you learn business fundamentals. We think both miss the mark.

You don’t need to spend decades working to become a partner. You don’t need to go into debt to earn a degree that teaches theory rooted in the past, instead of tactical strategies rooted in the future.

You just need one year at the Category Design Academy to propel your career and set yourself up for professional, personal, and financial autonomy.

The full price of the 10-month Category Design Academy training program is $10,000.

We offer two payment plans — one that's $1,000/month, another that's a one-time payment with a $1,000 discount. We're committed to your success and are confident we can help you achieve incredible outcomes.

What's the time commitment?

We know you don't have endless hours to build your business.

Between the self-paced training, live workshops, and exercises, you’ll spend no more than 1-3 hours per week in the Academy. This is the minimum time you need to work through the material and attend the core sessions. Some weeks will require 1 hour. Others will be closer to 3 hours.

Now, you might want to commit more time than this.

Maybe you spend one hour thinking or two hours on an exercise. Maybe you spend 30 minutes connecting with other members or commenting on their work.

Your time commitment beyond the workshops and training is up to you. But we think time in the Category Design Academy is the most valuable investment you can make in yourself. On top of the mandatory workshop sessions, there will also be occasional pop-up events with guest speakers and the Category Pirates.

Can this really work for me?

Category design is not for everyone. Consulting is not for everyone. Both require at least 10 months of discipline to understand and apply—and decades to master.

If you’re not committed to a lifelong pursuit, the Category Design Academy won’t work for you.

But we can assure you, over the past three years, we have taught over 31,000 people the fundamentals of category design through the Category Pirates newsletter. Many have experienced radical changes in their lives and careers as a result. We’ve used the frameworks and tactics we teach for our own businesses, S&P 500 companies, and Silicon Valley startups. We know what it takes to become not only a great category designer, but a different category designer who no one else can compete with.

If your goal is to position yourself as a radically different category designer and consultant who drives exponential outcomes for your clients, the Category Design Academy will help you reach that goal faster than you can alone.

So, join us—and let us share everything we know about category design with you.

Can’t I learn this myself with all of the free content out there?

It’s possible. And we encourage you to try that first. If it works for you, great!

But chances are, you've tried starting your own business or category design project before. You’ve thought about enrolling in an MBA program or a mastermind. You’ve jumped from job to job trying to find one that “fits.” And between the hours it would take you to aggregate all of the free content, the people you’d have to chase down to try and unlock decades of secrets, and the pains you would have trying to figure out the pitfalls and challenges on your own...

We think the $10,000 is well worth it.

What if I'm not tech-savvy?

Rest assured, you're in good company.

Within our crew, we have members of diverse ages, backgrounds, and levels of expertise—from tech-savvy Native Digitals to Native Analogs who are getting used to the latest software.

During our onboarding week, we’ll make sure you’re comfortable and confident navigating the technology, attending events, and accessing the materials.

What if I can't attend the live sessions?

We do our best to accommodate everyone, but we can't promise anything.

If you can't attend a live workshop, know that we record each of them and distribute them with detailed show notes, session transcripts, chat transcripts, and everything you could possibly need to soak the learnings out of them. And if you have questions after watching a recording, you can reach out to other crew members or us Pirates for help.

Will this help if I've already started my own consulting business?

Yes. In fact, you might be at an advantage.

The Category Design Academy teaches a new way of approaching category design consulting and shares strategies you likely haven’t seen anywhere else. Once you learn these frameworks and workshop them, you can apply them to your current business—and drive even more growth. You won’t have to wait the full year to get the benefits. Even week and month offers new exercises, training sessions, and advice you can immediately apply to your business.

As a result, we’re sure you'll 10x your pricing, find top-tier clients, and gain more confidence within 9 short months.

How long do I have access to the course materials?

Once a Category Design Academy Pirate, always a Category Design Academy Pirate. You’ll have access to the platform and this course material forever.

This includes all past and future live sessions, training, resources, and materials shared within the 9-month program.

Want to preview a few frameworks you’ll learn?

Enroll in our FREE 7-Day Category Accelerator email course

New to Category Design and not sure if the Category Design Academy is right for you?

Our free 7-Day Category Accelerator email course will introduce you to the fundamentals of Category Design, so you can see what the strategy is all about and start “thinking different.”

This free course just scratches the surface—our Category Design Academy is the deep dive!

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Day 1

The Category Is The Business Strategy

Day 2

Using Category Science To Discover Breakthrough Opportunities

Day 3

Framing, Naming, and Claiming A New Problem In The World

Day 4

The Magic Triangle Of Product, Company, And Category

Day 5

How To Avoid The “Better” Trap

Day 6

The 8 Category Levers Of Radical Differentiation

Day 7

Executing A Lightning Strike Marketing Event To Launch Your New Category

If you've made it this far, we know you're contemplating whether this journey is truly worthwhile.

Maybe you've been reading Category Pirates for some time and learning about category design.

Yes, you could piece together fragments of content online and attempt to master category design on your own. Maybe you've even taken that path before, only to find the results falling short of your expectations. Chances are, you've witnessed countless others start their own business and succeed, building legendary client lists and businesses along the way.

Yet, here you are, with "work for myself" etched on your long-standing goals list.

Imagine looking back, pointing to this very moment, this pivotal decision, as the catalyst for an extraordinary, life-altering year.

Picture your new business taking shape, a flourishing (and financially rewarding) career unfolding, deep and meaningful connections, and an entirely new personal trajectory carving its way into existence. All this and more is within your grasp—all you have to do is take control and create the future you want.

Right here, right now, is the path to transforming your professional and personal landscape.

So, fellow pirate, we have a question for you:

Will you seize this opportunity to become a Category Designer, unlocking the boundless possibilities that lie ahead?

The winds of radical change are blowing, and the Category Design Academy is here to help you chart a new and different course. So, join our group of radical thinkers and experience the transformative power of category design. The choice is yours. But rest assured, we’ll embark on this journey together.

Legendary, limitless horizons await.

Apply to the Category Design Academy

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