Lochhead on Marketing

On this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let’s ask what is the role of business, beyond just business. Today marks the 5th day into the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the first attack of its kind since Sept. 1, 1939 – the start of World War 2. So let’s talk about how this affects businesses, and how businesses can affect it. Roll Call for Companies According to the Wall Street Journal, the US is still buying 8% of its oil from Russia. On the commercial side, there has been no announcements by companies such as McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, and Papa John’s to name a few, on closure of their branches in Russia, temporary or otherwise. On the tech side of things, there have also been no word from Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, nor from Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, as well as CISCO CEO Chuck Robbins and Oracle CEO Safra Catz on their stance and plans as things progress in Russia. I'm disheartened, somewhat defeated, and absolutely fucking royally mad about the silence from Silicon Valley on this topic. There are some exceptions, of course. Criticize the man all you like, but Elon Musk made a commitment to keep the Ukraine connected to the internet via his Starlink satellite internet. Less than 48 hours after he made that promise, a shipment of Starlink terminals arrived in the Ukraine. Businesses Getting Involved in War There are those on the web that criticize people who celebrate when big corporations do something in the situation. My response to them is this: “Anyone who supports in any way, a free democratic society, who is being invaded, attacked, and mass murdered is a hero.” – Christopher Lochhead Now, if you wish to join me in making a financial contribution, we took a list of charities helping in the Ukraine(published by NBC News). You can check out that list of charities and I encourage you to crack open your wallet and see if you can make a difference for the people of Ukraine. You can also donate to Doctors Without Borders as they mobilize to help Ukraine and nearby countries that were affected. The Role of Businesses beyond Business As a business owner or entrepreneur, you might be asking – how exactly can businesses help in this situation? Well, imagine what would happen if all the tech security companies pulled the plug on the Russian government and on major Russian enterprise. Imagine if all tech infrastructure companies pulled the plug on Russia. Imagine if all of the SAS application companies, the database companies, the gaming companies, the IT operations companies shut down Russia's digital world, the digital world is as important today as the analog world. if they manage to shut down the Russians government's ability to do things in the digital world, we're going to shut down a lot. Of course, there are certain companies and certain situations where it makes sense to keep doing business. In Russia, for example, communication, and social platforms is critical for Russian citizens to be able to see and hear what their government is doing in the Ukraine. So what leaders do in times of crisis matters, what you and I do in times of crisis matters. If the US federal government will not stop buying Russian blood oil, will we stop doing business with Russia? Will our CEOs put peace before profits? Or will businesses do whatever they want to do? It's easy to be great when everything's great. But what defines our lives is who we choose to be in times of crisis. Bio Christopher Lochhead  We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!

We live in an age where fear is a product. It gets packaged, marketed, and sold to millions of people who never stop to ask who is profiting from their panic. Christopher Lochhead breaks this down brilliantly by taking us back to one of the most instructive fear campaigns in modern history: Y2K. Understanding how the Doomer Industrial Complex works is not about dismissing real problems. It is about developing the critical thinking skills to separate genuine risk from manufactured hysteria designed to control behavior and generate billions. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.   The Fear Flywheel: How It Starts With Something Real The most effective fear campaigns never begin with pure fiction. They begin with a legitimate problem, something real enough to justify concern. Y2K was exactly that. Old computer systems genuinely had vulnerabilities, and real work needed to be done to fix them. That was true and reasonable. What was not reasonable was the leap from “systems need fixing” to “civilization is collapsing.” The Doomer Industrial Complex took a manageable technical problem and marketed the absolute worst case scenario everywhere, until 53% of Americans considered Y2K one of the most critical issues facing the country. That is the flywheel beginning to spin.   Who Gets Paid When You Stay Scared Once fear reaches critical mass, the money follows fast. Consultants get hired, software gets purchased, conferences fill up, books get sold, and government budgets get approved. Every player in the ecosystem has their own incentive to keep the fear narrative alive and growing. This is the core of the Doomer Industrial Complex. Nobody needs to sit in a room and coordinate a conspiracy. Everyone simply responds to their own incentive. The journalist gets attention. The politician gets credit. The expert gains authority. The generator company sells inventory. The flywheel spins on its own momentum, fueled by everyone chasing their piece of the fear economy.   The Lens You Need to Spot the Doomer Industrial Complex Christopher offers a sharp and simple framework for cutting through manufactured panic. Instead of asking whether a problem is real, ask what the real problem actually is. Demand specificity. Reject the scary blob of a narrative and force it into precise, honest terms. Then follow the money. Ask who benefits if you stay frightened. Ask whether the people selling you the solution need your fear to remain at peak levels to stay relevant. When the answer is yes, you are watching the Doomer Industrial Complex in real time. The underlying problem may be genuine. The outsize, breathless hysteria almost certainly is not. To hear a more in-depth description and examples from Christopher Lochhead on the Doomer Industrial Complex, download and listen to this episode.   We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

During one of our recent episodes, the conversation with Benjamin Jaros around California’s Proposition 40, the so-called billionaire tax, surfaced questions that deserved more space than we could give them at the time. So we’re picking the thread back up here on Lochhead on Marketing. California’s November 2026 ballot carries one of the most consequential financial decisions in the state’s history. Marketed as a one-time 5% billionaire tax, Proposition 40 has drawn serious scrutiny from economists and policy researchers. Among those leading the charge in examining its true implications is Benjamin Jaros, a PhD economist and research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who specializes in public finance, financial economics, and economic history. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.   Benjamin Jaros Explains Why This Is America’s First True Net Worth Tax Benjamin Jaros was careful to draw an important distinction when discussing the historical context of wealth taxation in America. While critics on the left point to 19th-century general property taxes as precedent, Jaros clarified that those taxes targeted tangible assets tied to land and physical structures. They ultimately failed to capture intangible assets as corporate incorporation rose in the early 20th century. What Prop 40 proposes is fundamentally different. It would tax an individual’s total net worth, meaning the value of everything you own, whether or not you have sold anything or received any financial gain. This makes it, as Jaros confirmed, the first true net worth tax in American history, a distinction that carries enormous consequences for how assets are legally treated in California.   The Constitutional Vulnerabilities Hidden Inside Prop 40 One of the most revealing parts of Benjamin Jaros’s research involves the serious constitutional challenges that Prop 40 is likely to face if passed. He identified multiple legal fault lines, starting with the retroactive residency clause, which would make the tax effective from January 1st of the previous year, even though voters would not approve it until November. Jaros noted that the bill’s own drafters included severability clauses, signaling they already knew this was a legal vulnerability. Beyond retroactivity, Jaros highlighted major concerns around California’s attempt to tax worldwide assets, including those held by foreign nationals living in the state. The Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution limits state taxing authority to what the federal government can also reach. California cannot extend its taxing power beyond what federal law permits, which creates significant legal exposure that will almost certainly result in Supreme Court litigation.   Why the “One-Time Billionaire Tax” Story Does Not Hold Up Benjamin Jaros and Christopher Lochhead both zeroed in on what may be the most critical detail buried inside Prop 40. Section 510 of the Billionaire Tax Act allows the California legislature to amend virtually any part of the act with a two-thirds vote, as long as the changes are deemed to further the purposes of the act. That language is broad enough to allow changes to the rate, the threshold, and even the one-time nature of the tax itself. This means that what is being sold as a limited, one-time measure on 200 billionaires could legally be expanded to cover far more Californians over time. Jaros pointed out that the state supreme court, which would adjudicate whether any amendments fall within the purposes of the act, is stacked with appointees who are broadly deferential to legislative decisions. The structural safeguards that voters might assume exist simply are not strong enough to prevent future expansion of this tax down to far lower wealth thresholds.   Bio Benjamin Jaros is an economist and research fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in public finance, financial economics, and economic history, with a focus on federal, state, and local taxation. His recent research examines wealth taxation, budget scoring, taxpayer behavioral responses to income tax changes, state corporate income tax apportionment formula reforms, and colonial-era tobacco tariffs. He produces revenue estimates and fiscal impact analyses of state and federal tax policy. His research and commentary have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and RealClearPolitics. He has previously worked at the Tax Foundation and served as a research assistant in academic, policy, and private-sector settings. Jaros received his BS in economics, magna cum laude, from Seton Hall University and his MA and PhD in economics from Clemson University.   Links Hoover Institute | Github | LinkedIn We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!

The conversation around AI centers, data center protests, and artificial intelligence leadership is louder than ever. On the surface, stories about Meta’s lawsuit settlement, EU AI watermarking regulations, data center backlash, and Nvidia’s record-breaking quarter seem completely unrelated. But when you look through a category design lens, they all connect to one single issue: trust. Understanding who we trust with this technology is arguably the most important question of our generation. Being pro-AI does not mean blindly supporting every AI company, every regulation, or every infrastructure decision being made right now. It means engaging honestly with the realities of the technology while holding the people building it to a fair and reasonable standard of accountability. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.   The Trust Problem with AI Leadership The public faces of AI matter more than most people realize. Zuckerberg, Altman, and Dario at Anthropic have collectively done a poor job of inspiring confidence. Meta knowingly harmed children, settled for what amounts to a rounding error relative to their revenue, and now Zuckerberg wants his AI to know everything about your life. That history makes the ask feel deeply unsettling to everyday people. Anthropic competed against its own customer Cursor, and Dario consistently publishes content that reads more like a warning label than a vision for human progress. When the leaders of the most powerful AI companies in the world make people feel afraid rather than inspired, the backlash against AI centers and the technology broadly becomes far more understandable.   AI Data Center Protests Miss the Bigger Picture Protesting AI centers while organizing via smartphones, social media, Google Docs, Zoom, and GoFundMe is a contradiction that deserves to be called out directly. Every tool used to organize these protests runs on the same infrastructure being protested. As AI becomes embedded in nearly every piece of modern technology, the distinction between an AI data center and a regular data center is shrinking fast. That said, communities absolutely have the right to decide what gets built where. Transparency from companies like Meta has been shamefully poor, with secret contracts and NDAs keeping residents in the dark. The anger is real, but it is far more directed at the Darth Vader characters running these companies than at the actual environmental footprint of AI centers, which compared to most industrial installations is relatively minimal.   Nvidia and the Category King Standard Nvidia just posted 96.2 billion dollars in quarterly revenue, up 106 percent year over year, with guidance of 108 billion for the next quarter. This is unprecedented growth that proves AI demand is not theoretical. It is the largest new category demand ever recorded, and Nvidia sits at the center of it all by supplying the most critical hardware powering AI centers globally. What Jensen Huang and Nvidia are doing differently is expanding the category through open source investment, making AI more accessible and affordable for developers everywhere. Jensen does not speak in terrifying techno-babble. He is relatable, visionary, and feels trustworthy in a way that Zuckerberg, Altman, and Dario simply do not. The lesson from IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Steve Jobs is clear. People support technology when they trust the humans building it. To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and his musings on AI centers and AI trust, download and listen to this episode.   We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!  

California has long been the heartland of innovation, home to some of the most transformative companies in history. But a new proposal on the ballot is raising serious questions about whether the state is about to undermine the very foundation that made it great. Mark Cuban recently made headlines by stating that only idiot startup founders will stay in California, and while those words may sting, they carry a weight worth examining. Prop 40, marketed as a one-time billionaire tax, could have consequences that ripple far beyond the ultra-wealthy and touch every person who has ever bet their career on a startup dream. Welcome to Lochhead on Marketing. The number one charting marketing podcast for marketers, category designers, and entrepreneurs with a different mind.   What Prop 40 Actually Means for Startup Founders On the surface, Prop 40 presents itself as a simple solution to California’s budget shortfall: a one-time 5% tax on net worths exceeding one billion dollars. For many people, that sounds reasonable. Billionaires have enormous wealth, and the state needs revenue. But the fine print tells a more complicated story that every startup founder needs to understand. The proposal does not simply collect money from a small group of wealthy individuals. It amends the California Constitution to allow the taxation of all forms of personal property and wealth, whether tangible or intangible. That includes stock, stock options, and startup equity. The door being opened here is not just about billionaires today. It is about who could be targeted tomorrow, and startup founders stand squarely in that future line of sight.   The Risk to Startup Equity and the Innovation Ecosystem Startup founders and early employees have long accepted lower salaries in exchange for equity in the companies they help build. That trade-off is not just a financial strategy. It is the engine behind Silicon Valley’s greatest success stories. Six of the so-called Magnificent Eight companies, including Apple, Google, Meta, and Nvidia, are California startups that together represent roughly 25% of the entire S&P 500. That extraordinary value was built on a simple premise: take a risk, own a piece of something, and build it into something meaningful over time. Taxing unrealized gains and paper wealth disrupts that premise entirely. A 27-year-old startup employee who holds stock options worth millions on paper but has not yet sold a single share could find themselves facing a tax bill they have no cash to pay, simply for believing in a dream.   What Happens When Startup Founders Choose to Leave The Hoover Institute at Stanford has modeled the potential economic fallout from Prop 40 and concluded it could create a $24.7 billion negative fiscal impact for California. That figure accounts for the likely departure of a significant number of ultra-wealthy taxpayers, along with the income taxes, capital gains, business activity, and investment they currently generate for the state. Unlike a coal mine or a building, a software founder can work from anywhere. The deeper concern is not just about the billionaires who may leave. It is about the next generation of startup founders who may never come to California in the first place. The startup ecosystem thrives on incentive structures that reward risk-taking and long-term thinking. When those incentives erode, the flywheel of innovation does not stop immediately, but it can begin spinning somewhere else. Texas, Florida, and Tennessee are already attracting founders and capital at an accelerating pace, and California’s window to remain the undisputed leader in innovation is not guaranteed to stay open forever. To hear more from Christopher Lochhead and his thoughts on Prop 40, download and listen to this episode. Want to read more Different from Christopher Lochhead? Join his newsletter today!   We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and subscribe on Apple Podcast / Spotify!