Category Design Academy
You know you do legendary work.But are you getting paid what you are worth?
Apply For Cohort 5 →
24 seats. Applications close when seats fill or on September 30, whichever comes first.
Your bosses, clients, and customers rave about you.
Are you sure your pricing reflects your true value?
Do you know who your superconsumers really are?
Do you know how to position yourself as a category of one?
Can you tell someone your superpower in one sentence or less?
Do you know how to get customers to chase you instead of the other way around?
Have you always wanted to, but were frightened to launch your own lightning strike?
If you answered no to any of these questions, now might be the right time to join the Category Design Academy.
Five months, live, with Pirate Christopher Lochhead and Pirate Eddie Yoon.
And be part of a community of pirates where you'll make lifelong friends who will cheer you on, tell the truth, and maybe even partner up with you!
Is This You
Here's The Fast Version.
Apply For Cohort 5 →
24 seats. Applications close when seats fill or on September 30, whichever comes first.
This Is For You If
- ▸You've got a track record of outcomes you can point to.
- ▸Your solopreneur or entrepreneurial venture has momentum with +6-figures in revenue.
- ▸You know you have a superpower, but you haven't quite framed, named, and claimed it.
- ▸You have a gut feeling your pricing and business could be much higher, but you're not sure how.
This Is Not For You If
- ▸You're unsure if you deliver real outcomes (your resume doesn't count).
- ▸You're reactive instead of proactive, waiting to be told what to do.
- ▸You only want to debate and discuss, versus decide and do.
- ▸You don't want to share/practice in public with your pirates.
Features Of The Program
Here's Exactly What's Included.
1Five months of core curriculum. Async videos, articles, workbooks on your superpower, pricing, no-sell-sell, positioning yourself, superconsumers and lightning strikes.
2Two live workshops and one live AMA, every month. Real work, on your actual pricing, positioning, and deals. AMAs are with Pirate Christopher, are often cross-cohort, and fun!
3Academy AI, Skill Files, and private LLM access. Private LLM trained on the academy, as well as proprietary skills you can use with your AI of choice, and the Pirate Eddie Bot and Pirate Christopher Bots.
4Async access to the crew and community between workshops. Posts and feedback from Pirate Eddie & Bri, and alumni.
5Lifetime access to every future jam session, course material, and async community platform. Even after your cohort graduates.
6Confidence boost to take action. The Academy instills real courage you didn't know you needed.
The Five Months
Here's What You'll Actually Work On.
Month 1
Uncover Your Category Superpower
Decide what you'll be remembered for. Then follow your different.
Month 2
Price For Outcomes
Good-Better-Best pricing, from free to 10x your current offer. This is the month that stings before it clarifies. That's normal, not a sign you're behind.
Month 3
Master The No-Sell Sell
How to get clients to come to you, instead of chasing them. This is where the fastest wins in the current cohort have shown up. Real contracts, by month three.
Month 4
Position Yourself
Build a legendary reputation with personal category design.
Month 5
Know Your Superconsumers
Build meaningful, transformational relationships with your most loyal clients.
Bonus Content
7 Bonus Months Of Content
Set Up A Lightning Strike, Create A Sales Strategy, Know When To Walk Away, Run Legendary Meetings, Drive Meaningful Outcomes, Control Your Scope, and Own Your Category.
Bonus Content
Academy AI & Skill Files
Your private LLM co-founder plus downloadable Skill Files you drop into Claude, Perplexity, or any AI you use.
Bonus Content
Founding Subscription & Pirate Bots
Five months free of every book, mini-book, and Substack post, plus ongoing access to the Pirate Eddie Bot and Pirate Christopher Bot during the Academy.
Every member has lifetime access to the Academy. You're invited to every future jam session, retain access to the course content, and get access to interact with past, current, and future pirates. Cohort 1 members still show up to jam with Cohort 4. Miss a live workshop, fall behind for a month, take a real vacation in the middle of your cohort, none of it costs you anything.
The Investment
The Category Design Academy is an investment in yourself, your business, & your future.
When you explore a digital learning program, the first thing you want to know is simple: What does it cost?
Most marketers are taught to bury the price at the bottom of the page. As if making you play hide-and-seek with the investment somehow builds trust. It doesn't.
So, let's be 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 had a heart attack because that sounds like $9,999 too much, we understand.
You can instead check out our books, top paid business newsletter, free podcasts, or the $500 Creator Capitalist course.
But if you're ready to make a massive difference, read on.
24Seats Total
5Months, Live
2xPer Year
We make you apply to ensure your business is ready, has momentum and the time is right for all of us. You must also be a good fit for the community and cohort. We can take as many as two dozen pirates, but we may tailor the cohort size to fit the community. Joining means stepping into a small crew of motivated, outcome-oriented people who are serious about designing different. You'll experience real change in your career and your life, and you'll be ready to seize what's ahead of you. Seats are limited. Don't wait to claim yours.
One more thing, since we'd rather tell you now than let you find out the hard way. This isn't for people who are reactive instead of proactive, waiting to be told what to do. It isn't for people who sit with a decision for months instead of acting on the first one. And it isn't for people who need to keep their business under wraps: the Academy runs in public, in a room, not as private one-on-one time with Pirate Christopher and Pirate Eddie. If that's not you, this isn't gatekeeping. It's just not the right room yet.
Apply For The Academy
Already Know You're Ready To Go?
Apply For Cohort 5 → 24 seats. Applications close when seats fill or on September 30, whichever comes first.
Our Different Approach
This Isn't A Course. It's A Different Kind Of Transformation.
Where You Start
Someone Who Believes In Category Design
If you're reading this, chances are you've already read the mini-books. Maybe for months. Maybe for years. You've felt seen in a way most business content never manages, like someone finally had the language for things you knew but couldn't say.
How You Get There
Live, In The Room, Not Alone With A Login
Most programs hand you a login and a syllabus. This one hands you Pirate Christopher and Pirate Eddie, live, working your actual pricing, your actual positioning, your actual deal, in front of a room doing the same hard work you are. Watching someone else's breakthrough land is half the value.
Where You End Up
Someone Who Gets Paid Like A Category Designer
Believing the philosophy was never the hard part for you. The hard part is what happens after you believe it. The Academy is where you stop reading the people who changed how you see your own work, and start sitting in a room with them, live, working your actual pricing, your actual positioning, your actual deal, until you're not just someone who agrees with Category Design. You're someone who gets paid like a Category Designer.
Before any of that works, almost every member says some version of the same thing on their first call: "I don't know how to talk about what I do." The whole thing: how you introduce yourself at a dinner, how you open a sales call, how you explain to your own family what you've actually built. That's Languaging, and it's usually the actual front door into everything else we teach. Get the language right, and your Superconsumer, your POV, your pricing, and your Good-Better-Best strategy all have something to build on. Get it wrong, and even the best framework in the world is aimed at the wrong target.
You won't do this with people who look like you on paper, and that's the point. Our crews have included a Target and Home Depot retail executive, a military intelligence officer, a Class-A construction contractor, an attorney, a Madison Avenue creative director, a crypto-startup CEO, and a flooring expert who now skips RFPs entirely. Different starting points. Same requirement: something real to point to, and the will to build in public instead of in stealth mode.
Proof, Not Promises
What Pirates Say After They Join.
"I landed a $100K+ university contract by pitching flooring integrity instead of competing in the RFP. They skipped the bidding process entirely."
Sylvia Bowman, Flooring Integrity Expert
"The quiet part of the Category Design Academy is that it teaches you your own value and your own worth."
John Wilson, Mindsight Managing Director
"My sales cycle went from 30 months to 30 minutes."
Thomas Parrott, Margin Growth Architect
Do The Math
Calculate The ROI Of The Academy.
Most people don't avoid this calculator because the numbers are wrong. They avoid it because the numbers are right, and right is more than they've ever charged.
From
Current annual revenue
$80,000
To
If you properly valued your value
If you frame, name, and claim your category
If you targeted and won Superconsumers
Future annual revenue
$375,000
Your ROI
Incremental annual revenue
$295,000
ROI on $10,000 Academy investment
29.5x
If this is above 10x, sign up for the Academy.
Near term ROI, assume 10% improvement
Pricing lever only
$88,000
0.8x return
Customer lever only
$88,000
0.8x return
Units per customer lever only
$88,000
0.8x return
Pull all three levers 🏴☠️
$106,480
2.6x return
The Academy is about giving you the courage and clarity to actually pull these levers, not someday, but now.
"I just hit send on a scope of work, priced directly off the pricing skill and the Eddie Bot. It came out more than 5x the amount I originally would have projected. I said the number in the mirror over and over. I have a pit in my stomach as I write this, which proves to me pricing is about mindset."
Kristi Faulkner, Academy 4.0
Comes With Every Seat
Your AI Co-Founder Doesn't Clock Out When The Workshop Ends.
When you join the Academy, you get more than Pirates, peers, and frameworks. You get three things most programs don't even think to offer.
🤖
Academy AI
Fully trained on everything we teach inside the Academy: every playbook, every workshop, every lesson. Members don't treat it like a help widget. They treat it like a co-founder with opinions that will point them in the right direction.
📄
Skill Files
Skill Files don't just hand you your own Academy work. They package how Category Pirates thinks: Frame it, Name it, Claim it, the Magic Triangle, the No-Sell Sell, all of it, into files you drop straight into Claude, Perplexity, or whatever AI you already use. You don't spend week one teaching your AI how to think like a pirate. It already does. And it knows you.
🎁
Bonuses, Built In
Five months free of our Founding subscription the day you join: access to digital copies of every big book, every mini-book, everything on Substack. Plus five months of access to the Pirate Eddie Bot and the Pirate Christopher Bot.
I jam with the Pirate Eddie Bot on real client work, constantly. It's become my go-to thinking partner.
Lydia Flocchini, Academy 3.0
That's the point. It's not a help widget you open when you're stuck. It's a standing appointment with a thinking partner who never reschedules.
Questions
Frequently Asked Questions.
Is this just another course where the people behind it disappear once you buy?
Fair question, and a common one. Most digital education is built as a means to an end: a funnel to the next, more expensive thing, taught by people who show up in the sales video and nowhere else. That's not how this works. We love doing this work with you, personally. It's not a funnel to something else. This is the best we have to offer.
How much does this cost?
MBA programs run upwards of $80,000 a year. Exclusive masterminds charge $15,000 or more to teach business fundamentals. We think both miss the mark. You don't need a decade to make partner, and you don't need debt for a degree built on theory instead of tactics. You need a few months in the Academy to change your trajectory.
Pay in full or select 5 month payment plan at $2,000 a month. $2,000 saves your seat in the upcoming cohort.
What's the time commitment?
Between self-paced training, live workshops, and exercises, plan on 1 to 3 hours a week. That covers the material and the core sessions. Some weeks are lighter, some are heavier. Beyond that, your time is your call, and we think it's the best investment you'll make in yourself. There are also occasional pop-up events with guest speakers and the Pirates.
What if I have a week-long vacation scheduled during it?
Take it. Every live session is recorded, and everything is lifetime-access and self-paced, so a week away doesn't cost you anything. Some members come back from a real break with more clarity than they left with. Stepping away is sometimes exactly what it takes to actually process what you've been building. Jam sessions exist to catch you up whenever you're ready, not to make you feel like you missed the boat.
Can this really work for me?
Category design isn't for everyone. Working closely with clients isn't for everyone. Both take months to understand and years to master. If you're not in it for the long haul, this won't work for you. But we've taught the fundamentals of category design to over 35,000 people over the past three years through the newsletter, and we've used these frameworks for our own businesses, S&P 500 companies, and Silicon Valley startups. If your goal is to become a category designer no one else can compete with, we'll get you there faster than you'd get there alone.
Can't I learn this myself from your free content?
Possibly. Try it first. If it works, great. But chances are you've already tried piecing together a business or a category design project from free content, an MBA program, or a mastermind, and it didn't stick. Between the hours it takes to aggregate everything free, and the pain of figuring out the pitfalls on your own, we think the $10,000 is well worth it.
What if I'm not tech-savvy?
You're in good company. Our crews span every age, background, and comfort level with technology. During onboarding week, we make sure you're confident navigating the tools, the events, and the materials before anything else starts.
What if I can't attend the live sessions?
Every live session is recorded and shared with detailed show notes, transcripts, and chat transcripts. If you have questions after watching a recording, other members and the Pirates are there to help.
Will this help if I've already started my own business?
Yes, and you'll have an advantage. The Academy teaches strategies you likely haven't seen anywhere else. Apply them to your current business and you'll drive more growth without waiting long. Every week offers something you can use immediately. Expect to raise your pricing, land better clients, and gain real confidence within six months.
How long do I have access to the material?
Once a Pirate, always a Pirate. You keep access to the platform and every course material forever, including all past and future live sessions, training, and resources shared inside the program.
What if my venture is new, even if I'm not?
That's most of our crew. This isn't about how long your business has existed. It's about whether you've ever produced a result you can point to and say "I did that, and here's the number." We don't train you to have an outcome. We train you to take the outcome you already have, turn it into revenue, and scale that revenue. If you've spent fifteen, twenty, thirty years producing outcomes inside someone else's company and you're only now building your own thing, you're not behind. You're exactly on time.
What is Academy AI, and how does it help?
Academy AI (formerly called Libby) is trained on every playbook, workshop, and lesson we've ever created inside the Academy. Think of it as your AI co-founder.
Immediate feedback: pressure-test ideas and sharpen your language without waiting for the next live session.
Keeps you on track: trained on the Academy curriculum itself, so it guides you back to the frameworks you're actually working on.
Always on: late-night inspiration or a mid-week question, it's there.
Skill Files: beyond Academy AI, you'll get downloadable Skill Files that package how Category Pirates thinks, not just your own Academy work, into files you can drop into Claude, Perplexity, or any AI you already use. Your thinking travels with you. You're never starting over with a blank AI.
You Already Believe This.
The Only Question Is Timing.
Believing category design is real was never the hard part. You wouldn't have read this many mini-books if it were. The thing that actually stops people isn't belief. It's timing, waiting for the launch, the quarter, the sign that makes the leap feel ready enough to take.
Belief isn't just a feeling. It's a specific set of things you have to think are true: that you can raise your price, that you can name your category, that the people who already love your work have more room in their budget than you think, that they'll refer you when you do this right. If you already believe those things, even quietly, the only real question left is timing.
Everyone who's ever done something legendary was scared before they did it. The only difference between the people who become legendary and the people who don't is that legendary people keep moving. Results don't equal no results plus a good excuse. Everyone needs a corner: someone with real insight, and someone who tells you that you've got more in you than you know, right when you're about to quit. That's what this room is for.
There's no more-ready version of you on the way. The outcomes you're sitting on right now are already enough to start from. The Academy doesn't hand you a new belief. It hands you a room, a language, and enough proof that the belief you already have stops feeling like a hunch and starts feeling like a fact.
If you believe this is different, not better, the timing question answers itself.
Apply For Cohort 5 →
24 seats. Applications close when seats fill or on September 30, whichever comes first.