I’ve read Play Bigger three times. For a business strategy book, that’s saying something.
It was recommended to me by Russell Brunson, and I can see why he rates it. It’s written by four people, Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead and Kevin Maney, who spent years around Silicon Valley start-ups. Don’t let that put you off. The idea works for a coffee shop as well as a tech company.
The idea is to create your own category rather than compete in someone else’s. It really is that simple.
They call it category design. Their argument is that the companies who win big define a whole new category, explain why it matters, and become the obvious leader of it. The book calls those companies category kings.
One example in the book is Salesforce, which marketed the end of software before most people knew what software over the internet even was. It sold the problem with the old way first. By the time everyone else caught on, Salesforce owned the conversation.
It fits with something Russell says in Expert Secrets. People are much more excited by a new opportunity than by an improvement on something they’ve already tried. A new category is a new opportunity. A slightly better version of the old thing is just an improvement, and you’re straight into the comparison game.
Market the problem first
The bit that stuck with me is about marketing the problem. Most businesses lead with their solution. Here’s our product, here’s what it does, here’s why it’s better than theirs.
Category kings flip that around. They help you see the problem first, often one you didn’t know you had, or one you’d just accepted as the way things are. Once you can see it, they’re the obvious answer, because they’re the ones who named it.
Market the problem and then be the solution. Don’t be the ‘me too’ solution to someone else’s problem. Don’t try to fit in where someone else already exists.
The moment you join an existing category, you’re judged against the leader of it. You’re the cheaper one, or the slightly different one, or the local one. You’ll spend your life explaining why you’re nearly as good as somebody else.
“Part of being a category king is having the courage to be nonconsensus.”
Nonconsensus is a clunky word for a simple thing. It means seeing something before everyone agrees it’s there. That takes a bit of nerve. For a while, you look slightly daft, because nobody else is talking about the problem yet.
The book suggests you write down your point of view. That means the problem as you see it, why it matters, and what the world looks like once it’s solved. You put it everywhere, so that your team, your customers and anybody who’ll listen start to see the problem the way you do. They also talk about a lightning strike, one big moment where you make enough noise about the new category that people can’t ignore it.
A DJ’s way of looking at it
I’ve been a DJ since 1987, so I tend to think about this through music. The people who started hip hop at parties in the Bronx made something new out of the records already lying around. They gave it a name, and everyone else spent years catching up.
That’s a category. Nobody had to compare it to anything, because there was nothing to compare it to.
Most of us won’t create anything that big, and you don’t need to. You can do the same thing on a small scale. Find a problem your customers have that nobody in your world is talking about. Give it a name people can use. Then become the person who solves it.
A good place to start is your customers’ own words. Ask them what frustrated them before they found you. The way they describe the problem is often a better name for what you do than anything you’d come up with in a meeting.
If you’re always being compared on price, there’s a decent chance you’re fighting in someone else’s category. That’s a sign worth paying attention to.
Russell recommended it to me, so I’m passing it on. It’s in my free guide, 50 Books That Shaped Me.
Carve out a niche all of your own. It might feel lonely for a while. That’s usually a sign you’re onto something.
