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Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different™

Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different™

Written by: Christopher Lochhead
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Christopher Lochhead | Follow Your Different is pioneer in real dialogue podcasts. “The best business podcast” – Podcast Magazine “The worst business podcast” – Neil Pearlberg© 2022 Christopher Lochhead Follow Your Different™ Podcast Economics Social Sciences
Episodes
  • 463 James Dyson built a $499 Toothbrush And Has No Idea How Many He’ll Sell | The Pirate Street Journal

    463 James Dyson built a $499 Toothbrush And Has No Idea How Many He’ll Sell | The Pirate Street Journal
    Sep 23 2026
    James Dyson built his reputation on solving problems that other companies decided weren’t worth solving. He spent years perfecting vacuum cleaners when most manufacturers had moved on, and he turned a $400 hairdryer into a luxury category that nobody saw coming. Now, at 79 years old, he’s done it again. The Dyson Airow is a $499 toothbrush with a tiny camera in the brush head that takes 28 images per second, finds gaps between teeth, and fires a jet of mouthwash to clean them while you brush. When the Wall Street Journal asked Dyson how big the market is, he said he had no idea how many would sell and that he doesn’t structure decisions around a business plan. That answer would make most consultants nervous. For anyone paying attention to how categories actually get created, it’s one of the most honest things a founder has said in years. This episode of The Pirate Street Journal breaks down three major business topics through that lens. Christopher, Eddie, and Bri take a hard look at the week’s most important business news and share what the Wall Street Journal and the rest of the mainstream press consistently miss. The result is a faster, sharper, and more honest read on how business actually works. You’re listening to Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. We are the real dialogue podcast for people with a different mind. So get your mind in a different place, and hey ho, let’s go. Why Nobody Else Would Have Built This Every traditional business process would have killed this product at the market sizing slide. Oral care is a crowded category controlled by a small number of large companies, and a meaningful portion of toothbrushes are given away free at dental offices twice a year. The numbers would have told any reasonable analyst that a $499 toothbrush had no addressable market worth chasing. Dyson didn’t look at the market that existed. He looked at the behavior that wasn’t working. Only about 30% of American adults floss every day, and a third never floss at all. That’s not a market gap sitting in a spreadsheet. That’s a visible, daily failure that nobody in the category had built a real solution around. When a founder sees something like that and decides to spend six years fixing it, that’s where new categories begin. The Super Consumer Nobody Was Selling To There’s a specific type of oral care buyer who already owns an electric toothbrush, a water pick, floss, and whitening products. They’re not buying these things out of habit. They believe what the science supports, that oral health connects directly to overall health, that bacteria from gum disease can enter the bloodstream and affect the heart. For this buyer, $499 for a device that addresses the part of brushing that nothing else fully handles isn’t an indulgence. It’s a logical purchase. This is the same dynamic that drove Oral-B’s power manual toothbrush years ago, a product that many people inside the company thought was a terrible idea. A battery-powered brush that looked like a regular toothbrush, priced at $7, with a non-replaceable battery. People said no one would pay for something they already got free. Those same people probably didn’t think anyone would pay for bottled water either. The Data Play Nobody Is Talking About The Airow, as it stands, is a camera in your mouth taking nearly 30 frames per second. That camera is going to get connected to software, and that software will generate health data that no other company in the oral care space has ever had access to at scale. Over time, the Dyson toothbrush becomes less of a hardware product and more of a data collection platform, one that dentists, orthodontists, and health companies will find genuinely useful. Dyson’s long game here follows a logic similar to what Tesla has built with its vehicle fleet. The cars on the road today are gathering the driving data that makes autonomous systems better tomorrow. A connected Dyson toothbrush does the same thing inside a market that has barely been touched by this kind of thinking. The person who owns a category like that doesn’t just sell more product. They own the information infrastructure that everyone else eventually has to work around. To hear about the topics in this week’s The Pirate Street Journal, download and listen to this episode. You can also read more Pirate Street Journal entries in the Category Pirates newsletter. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!
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    35 mins
  • 464 Jersey Mike’s Is Worth $7.5 Billion And 2% Of Its Customers Are Gen Z | The Pirate Street Journal

    464 Jersey Mike’s Is Worth $7.5 Billion And 2% Of Its Customers Are Gen Z | The Pirate Street Journal
    Sep 30 2026

    Jersey Mike’s went public this year after a Blackstone takeover, and Wall Street has put a price tag of about $7.5 billion on it. The chain has posted 20 straight years of same store sales growth and pulled in $4.3 billion last year. It sits right behind Subway as the number two sub chain in America. But here’s the catch. Roughly 70 percent of its customers are Gen X or boomers, and Gen Z makes up just 2 percent. The plan is to grow from 3,300 stores to 15,000, and that math only works if younger eaters show up.

    This episode of The Pirate Street Journal breaks down three major business topics through that lens. Christopher, Eddie, and Bri take a hard look at the week’s most important business news and share what the Wall Street Journal and the rest of the mainstream press consistently miss. The result is a faster, sharper, and more honest read on how business actually works.

    You’re listening to Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. We are the real dialogue podcast for people with a different mind. So get your mind in a different place, and hey ho, let’s go.

    Jersey Mike’s: The Debt, the Price Tag, and a Sandwich Category Gen Z Doesn’t Crave

    Blackstone loaded Jersey Mike’s with about $1.8 billion in debt, and some of it paid Blackstone before the IPO. That pressure explains why the chain needs 15,000 stores. Now, a sub with chips and a drink runs 15 to 20 bucks, which is a long way from the $5 footlong that built Subway.

    Then there’s the palate issue. Ask a Gen Z kid where to eat and Chipotle comes up before any sandwich shop. Mexican food is now what the sandwich was 20 years ago. Marketing spend alone, like a TikTok dance, won’t fix a category that simply isn’t on their list.

    Strong Unit Economics Meet a Subway Warning

    There’s a real bright spot. A Jersey Mike’s franchise costs about $575,000 to open and does roughly $1.37 million in sales. Jimmy Johns needs about $550,000 for around a million, and Subway takes $380,000 for just $500,000. Which means Jersey Mike’s converts cash better than its sandwich rivals.

    The danger is repeating Subway’s mistake. Subway chased cheaper, younger customers with discounts and has been shrinking ever since. Jersey Mike’s already has 12.5 million loyalty members who visit three times as often as everyone else. Protecting that base while courting a new one is the tightest wire the new CEO has to walk.

    Getting Different With the Menu and the Franchise Pitch

    The fix is to get different, not just louder. Jersey Mike’s only put about 1 percent of its marketing into social last year, while peers spend 10 to 25 percent. Still, more TikTok won’t create a new reason to care. A banh mi sub, a Mexican sub, or a chicken parm sub could give the chain a palate that matches how younger people actually eat.

    There’s also an entrepreneurship angle. Gen Z is putting business formation ahead of family formation. A six figure investment in a Jersey Mike’s franchise could look better to them than six figures of college debt, and that turns the 2 percent problem into a recruiting pitch.

    To hear more about the topics in this week’s The Pirate Street Journal, download and listen to this episode. You can also read more Pirate Street Journal entries in the Category Pirates newsletter.

    We hope you enjoyed this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!
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    34 mins
  • 453 How To Talk To Your Parents About Money Before It’s Too Late | Category Pirates

    453 How To Talk To Your Parents About Money Before It’s Too Late | Category Pirates
    Aug 20 2026
    Money is one of the most emotionally charged topics in any family, yet it is also one of the most important conversations we often avoid. Many adult children discover too late that their parents have made significant financial decisions without any guidance, leaving families scrambling to fix problems that could have been prevented. Whether it is annuities, unclear estate plans, or unknown financial advisors influencing your parents, the time to act is now. Having an honest, loving conversation about money with your parents could be the most meaningful thing you ever do for them. This conversation is not just about numbers on a spreadsheet. It is about understanding what your parents truly want from the rest of their lives and making sure their money is working to support that vision. When we ignore this conversation, we risk letting well-meaning but poorly informed advisors, complex financial products, and unspoken expectations quietly damage the financial security our parents spent a lifetime building. You’re listening to Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different. We are the real dialogue podcast for people with a different mind. So get your mind in a different place, and hey ho, let’s go. The Hidden Danger of Financial Products Targeting Older People Money fears are real, especially for older people who are no longer earning an income and are living off their savings. Insurance companies and financial product sellers know this deeply, and they craft their language specifically to tap into that fear. Terms like “guaranteed lifetime income,” “downside protection,” and “0% floor” sound incredibly reassuring, but they can create an impression that is radically incomplete. Annuities, for example, are often sold to older individuals with language that makes them sound completely risk-free, when in reality there are significant limitations, surrender schedules, and opportunity costs that are rarely explained upfront. The good news is that technology has given us a powerful tool to fight back against this kind of information asymmetry. Artificial intelligence can now break down the most complex financial contracts into plain language. You can take any financial document your parents are considering, drop it into an AI tool, and ask it to explain exactly what the fees are, what the restrictions are, and what the real costs are. This does not replace a trusted financial advisor, but it arms you with the knowledge to ask the right questions and protect the people you love. Understanding Your Own Conflict of Interest Around Money Before you sit down to help your parents with their money, there is one deeply important question you need to ask yourself privately. Do you need your parents money? This is not a question designed to make you feel guilty. It is a question designed to help you recognize whether you have a conflict of interest that could subtly influence the advice you give. If your financial future depends on your parents inheritance or ongoing support, then you are not a fully neutral party in this conversation, no matter how good your intentions are. Acknowledging a conflict of interest does not make you a bad person. It makes you an honest one. If you recognize that you do have a stake in the outcome, the responsible move is to bring other trusted voices into the room, such as a sibling, a CPA, or an independent financial advisor. Always remember that your parents money is not your money. They earned it, saved it, and sacrificed for it over an entire lifetime. The goal of any financial conversation with them should be to help them use their money to fund the life they want, not the inheritance you are hoping for. Building a Simple Money Plan Around What Your Parents Actually Want The most important shift you can make in talking to your parents about money is to stop leading with numbers and start leading with questions about their life. Ask them what they want the rest of their lives to look like. Ask what would make them feel secure, comfortable, and fulfilled. When Eddie stopped lecturing his mother about spreadsheets and started asking what she truly wanted, the entire conversation changed. His mother did not want to be a burden. She wanted independence, comfort, and something meaningful to leave for her grandchildren. Those are life goals, and money is simply the tool to fund them. Once you understand what your parents want, you can organize their money into three simple categories. First is liquidity, meaning the money needed to cover their day to day life. Second is longevity, meaning a cushion that protects them if they live a long time or face expensive health care needs. Third is legacy, meaning what they want to leave behind when they are gone. Keeping siblings involved and maintaining full transparency throughout this process is essential. Unspoken expectations and secret financial arrangements are what destroy families, not the money itself. When everyone is ...
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    51 mins
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