Why You Want To Be A Creator Capitalist, Why I’m Always Buying New Van Halen T-Shirts & Pirate (scooby) Snacks

Category shifts bring the greatest opportunities—and AI is the biggest work shift in history.

Lochhead🏴‍☠️

Apr 13, 2025

Thanks for reading.

Welcome to The Different Newsletter.

Musings for entrepreneurs, marketing leaders, category designers and creators with a different mind.

This is a special edition focused on (what we believe) is the biggest shift in work since the Industrial Revolution.

New Valen Halen T-Shirts

This is me in my new Van Halen t-shirt.

I get a new one every 9-12 months.

Here’s what why.

My wife Kari does not like this t-shirt.

(Or Van Halen)

So after about 6 months this t-shirt will “get lost”.

Then.

3-6 months after it gets “lost,” I will discover it’s “lost”.

And buy a new one.

That’s (the story of why) I get a new Van Halen t-shirt every 9-12 months.

🏴‍☠️

Why You Want To Be Creator Capitalist

In 1959, Peter Drucker saw a legendary shift coming—the world was moving from muscle to mind.

From factory floors to office towers.

From blue collar to white collar.

So Drucker created a new category: "Knowledge Workers,” people who work primarily with information and ideas rather than physical things.

For over 70 years, he was right.

Knowledge Workers became the most valuable people in every organization.

Companies obsessed over "knowledge worker productivity." Parents pushed their kids toward Knowledge Work careers (doctors, lawyers, professors, accountants, bankers, scientists, etc).

The game was simple:

Get educated (acquire valuable knowledge)
Get hired (apply that knowledge)
Get paid (trade knowledge for money)
Get promoted (apply more knowledge)
Retire (stop trading knowledge)

This model created the most prosperous professional class in human history.

Until now.

The Internet democratized access to knowledge. AI made knowledge instantly available to anyone.

Suddenly, knowing things isn't enough anymore. (Anybody can know anything they want, any time they want.)

When ChatGPT can instantly explain complex legal precedents, or AI can analyze market data faster than any human, or write high-quality software, or algorithms that diagnose diseases more accurately than doctors…

What's the value of just being knowledgeable?

AI changes the value of existing knowledge (and that’s great news).

Back in the day, knowledge was power. People repeated “knowledge is power” like a mantra.

Existing knowledge had value because few humans could memorize and regurgitate knowledge on demand.

The more valuable knowledge you had, the more valuable you were.

These folks were called experts, professors, and professionals.

That’s why students were taught to memorize knowledge. Tests were created to discern how much (existing) knowledge students could accurately regurgitate.

Knowledge Regurgitation was how you passed or not.
Knowledge Regurgitation determined if you moved on to the next grade.
Knowledge Regurgitation test scores determined where you could go to college.
Knowledge Regurgitation was the driver of whether you got hired, promoted, and paid.
Knowledge cramming and regurgitation was the game.

That’s over.

AI destroys the value of existing knowledge.

Today, knowledge is cheaper than sand.

Because AI doesn't just compete with Knowledge Workers—it demolishes them. Consider this:

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon says AI can draft 95% of an IPO prospectus (an S-1) in minutes—a task that used to require days of high-powered bankers, lawyers, and consultants. (We’ve written a few S1s in our day. It used to be a long, very expensive, slow grind. Not now.)
Goldman Sachs research predicts AI will impact 300 million jobs globally. (Yes, you read that right—300 million jobs.)
Some experts project that 90% of internet content will be AI-generated by 2026. (Read that again—90%.)

The writing isn't just on the wall.

It's flashing neon on a billboard the size of Texas.

Want corporate law explained in five seconds flat? ChatGPT can do that. Need market insights faster than Goldman Sachs can draft a single S-1 slide? Perplexity and Grok have it covered.

We used to live under Moore’s Law—the idea that computing power doubled every two years.

But that timeline just got nuked.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang calls it Hyper Moore’s Law—AI isn’t doubling in power every two years.

It’s doubling every 6 to 10 months.

🏎️ 🏎️ 🏴‍☠️

That means what was “state-of-the-art” in spring could be laughably outdated by Christmas.

And it’s not just speed.

It’s scale.

AI is now learning faster and creating more impact than most humans can comprehend.

This is no longer about keeping up.

It’s about catching a wave that’s already halfway to shore. (And AI is not just a wave. It’s a massive swell of compounding waves of increasing power.)

The value stack has fundamentally shifted.

Forever.

FROM Knowledge Workers who:

Learn existing information
Apply knowledge for others in a company
Own their title and paycheck
Trade time for money
Balance work/life
Stay in their lane
Compete on memorization/regurgitation
Enjoy retirement and not working

TO Creator Capitalists who:

Create new knowledge
Build scalable solutions for themselves
Own their own intellectual property
Trade outcomes for money
Have radical agency over their time
Design their category
Lead through different
Love work and never want to retire

We predict AI will create more new value in the next 5 years than the past 20 combined.

But we’re worried many won’t recognize the profundity of this shift until it’s too late.

While AI decreases the value of existing knowledge, it massively increases the value of creators—those who can leverage AI to generate net-new ideas, solutions, and content.

That’s why we’re on this mission: To propel you to become a Creator Capitalist who thrives in a post-AI world.

Now, we're not here to teach you how to code, prompt-engineer, or build your ChatGPT clone.

Plenty of legendary people already have that covered.

Instead, our goal is to hand you a new lens to help you become someone who creates new value using AI, not someone replaced by it.

Because this isn't just another career trend.

It's as big a shift as Drucker saw in 1959—from manual labor to knowledge work.

Frankly, we don't think it's much of a choice at all.

Soon, there will be two kinds of people:

1) Those made redundant by AI and

2) those made rich by AI.

If you want to be the latter, it’s time to focus on new ways of thinking, innovating, and creating exponential value. Think.

And let these two questions open your mind to the possibilities:

If I were redesigning my career right now, with AI at its core, what would I build?
If I launched a new business today, designed around AI from day one, how would it be different?

Because in an AI-first world, simply knowing things is no longer enough.

You must create.

🏴‍☠️

Thanks for reading.

Shalom my Pirate friend,

Christopher Lochhead

👊🏴‍☠️🙏

Here come the dis-credits.

Pirate (scooby) Snacks ☠️

And Legal Warnings…..

All Different newsletters contain nuts 🐿

All rights perturbed.

Category Pirates is our real newsletter.

People who subscribe on Substack get this Different newsletter first.

This Different Newsletter originally published on a Sunday afternoon to ensure the minimum number of people read it.

Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking.

Dear Americans.

For the love of God.

Please.

Pretty please with bourbon on top.

Get the fuck out of the passing lane.

🏎️ 🏎️ 🏴‍☠️

You should feel very little obligation to read from this point on.

Your time would be better spent watching re-runs of the original Star Trek show from the ‘60s.

Or getting your toe nails done.

More than 200 pairs of sunglasses are turned into Disneyworld’s Lost and Found each day, over 70,000 a year.

Tell two people you love, about two podcasts you love.

Police detain 6 climbers who wanted to scale Cologne’s famous cathedral

4 Eyewitness Stories of Bigfoot Sightings

This time, we're going beyond 11. 🤘

“Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” reunites director Rob Reiner with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer as they reprise their iconic roles as the legendary heavy metal band Spinal Tap in this long-awaited sequel.

Almost everything you need to learn about life, can be gained by watching The Big Lebowski and Spinal Tap.

Man arrested in U.K. cheese heist where imposter stole $389,000 worth of cheddar

Groom Elopes with His Soon-to-Be Mother-in-Law Just 9 Days Before His Wedding

Taylor Swift is named after James Taylor.

(I saw James Taylor in concert once. He was great. And way boring.)

There are laws in some areas of Florida preventing mobile food truck operators from dressing too sexy. Out of fear it may be a source of distraction for passing drivers.

Most people try to fit into a career.

Not you.

You want to design one that’s uniquely yours.

And thrive in the post-AI world.

The brand new Creator Capitalist course (from

Category Pirates 🏴‍☠️

) is the step-by-step system that shows you how to break free from traditional paths and design a career that works for YOU.

One that makes you irreplaceable, gives you agency over how you work, and pays you generously for the value you bring.

Enrollment is open now.

Boris Johnson Attacked By Ostrich In Hilarious Video Shared By His Wife

Nevada man arrested after 7 'emotional support' tigers are seized from his home

AI Can Smell: Experimental AI systems have been developed to analyze molecular structures and predict odors, essentially "smelling" chemicals without a nose. This could revolutionize industries like perfumery or food science.

Intercourse, Pennsylvania… is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Leacock Township.

(Philadelphia is roughly 50 miles east of Intercourse.)

Contrary to Internet rumors, “The McKinsey Quarterly” is not the secret funder or publisher of this newsletter.

We in no-way-shape-of form are associated with McKinsey & Co.

(We are solely funded by Bad Tuna Industries)

Sharing this newsletter (broadly) will elongate your life by as much as a decade.

There are a sum total of zero cover bands in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

The Ramones remind us, “There's no stoppin' the cretins from hoppin'”

Like fingerprints, everyone’s tongue has a unique pattern of bumps and ridges, usable for identification.

Marketing that does not drive revenue, is called “arts & crafts.”

(Every time I post that, it makes some people nuts.)

There will be repetitive content from time to to…because the creator of this newsletter will absolutely forget he already posted it…

….this is a feature, not a bug.

Muscle cars & drive bars.

The future belongs to the different.

Eddie Van Halen was right.

Hey, thanks for hanging out for the extra (silly) Pirate (scooby) snacks at the end...

….let's hang out again soon

😎🏴☠️🙏

Different by Christopher Lochhead 🏴‍☠️

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