Open Letter From Pirate Cole: On To Another Chapter!

We will miss you, Cole. Once in the band, always in the band. 👊🏴‍☠️🎸

Ahoy, Pirates!

It’s Pirate Cole, and I’m excited to share with you that there’s a new pirate in town. In fact, you’ve probably already seen Pirate Kat’s name at the bottom of our most recent mini-books and as one of the co-authors of the recently published The 22 Laws of Category Design.

She is the newest member of our Business Writing Band.

And she will be replacing my role moving forward—allowing me to continue on to another chapter.

I am so proud of everything we have accomplished up to this point.

In the 3 years Pirate Christopher, Pirate Eddie, and I worked together, we:

• Created over 50 mini-books.

• Authored 3 big books (The Category Design Toolkit, A Marketer’s Guide To Category Design, and Snow Leopard).

• And established Category Pirates as one of the most-read paid business newsletters in the entire Substack ecosystem.

More importantly, we became great friends—and I consider both of them incredible mentors and lifelong pirates. ARRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Our work together has been nothing short of life-changing for me, not just because of how much I’ve learned from the two of them but because of how much I believe Category Design matters. The world needs it. 

Unfortunately, I am currently running 3 other companies, and hard as I’ve tried to manufacture more hours each day, I have yet to find the proper mechanism for doing so. As much as I would love to continue building Category Pirates and be part of its future, we came to the collective decision that what was in the best interest of our “band” was to enlist the help of someone else. 

Even still, I hope to wave the pirate flag forever.

But before I go, I just wanted to say Thank You for reading. Building Category Pirates has been some of the most fun I’ve ever had in business—and I can’t wait to see where The Band takes things from here. I’ll always be a fan.

All the best,

Cole