Ep80 Kevin Maney - How to Use the Category Creation Formula to Own Your Market and Make Competition Irrelevant

Kevin Maney  0:00  
We came up with this very simple formula: it's context plus missing plus innovation equals a new market category, and it's very important that it's in that order. It's a much more inviting way to market something, first of all, to see the product you should build, but also then to put that message out there than just saying, like, here's my product, you figure out what to do with it.

Suzanne Taylor-King  0:27  
Hey, hey, welcome to a podcast where dreams meet determination, and success is just around the corner. I'm your host, Suzanne Taylor King, and I'm here to help you unlock the full potential of your business and your life. Welcome to Unlock Your Way with STK. Let's unlock your path to success together. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Suzanne Taylor King here for another live Friday episode of Unlock Your Way with STK, and I am really excited for today's conversation with the first ever second time guest on the show, Kevin Manny, and he is the co-founder of Category Design Advisors, a prolific author, has a new book out, and we're going to get into it today. Welcome to the show, Kevin.

Kevin Maney  1:27  
Thanks, Suzanne, I appreciate it. I feel like, you know, one of those guests on Saturday Night Live is touting, you know, I've been on five times, whatever.

Suzanne Taylor-King  1:36  
Well, that could be a thing that could, that could be. I might argue that that's my category design formula. I like that. Well, everyone who knows me knows I am a huge fan of authentic genius. I'm a huge fan of really niching down your business and being the only person who uniquely does what you do, which is category design, for those of you that don't know, and let's touch on a little bit of how this originally came to you, how how category design came into your life?

Kevin Maney  2:22  
Oh, yeah. Okay, good question. So, I mean, I started life as a journalist, covering IBM, actually in my hometown of Binghamton, New York, and so then spent, you know, decades covering the tech industry, meeting a lot of interesting people ready some handful of books, and at some point we're talking most has been 2014 I got a call for a message from an old friend, Al Ramadan, who I'd met a decade before when he had a company called Quacka sports thought he was one of the smartest people out there about how the internet was going to change our sports viewing experience.

Speaker 1  3:08  
Oh, wow.

Kevin Maney  3:08  
And he said, well, I've been doing something interesting. I've been working with these other two guys, Dave Peterson and Chris Lockhead, and we advise companies of advised startups, and we have this, we have this concept over this starting, which, which was so after covering tech for a very long time, I, you know, when he said this, I kind of inherently knew, like, yeah, this is actually really true, and that starting point was that in most markets, and especially in digital markets, where everybody can from all over the world can access whatever you're offering in any particular category, market category. One company tends to take, let's say, you know, ballpark at three quarters of the category, right. There's one huge, there's an Uber, there's an Airbnb, there's a Salesforce that, that, that not only wins almost all of the, you know, the pricing power and the economics and the market share, but also sets the tone for the category.

Speaker 1  4:12  
Yeah,

Kevin Maney  4:12  
and and so what they said to me, we had dinner in San Francisco, and they said, so we've been trying to advise startups that if that's the case, why wouldn't you want to do everything you can to be that company, and you know there's no guarantees, there's no, but you know, but why wouldn't you do everything to increase your odds that you're that company that wins the category, because that's where all the stakes are, and so they had, they had a handful of interesting concepts, they kind of, some of them were connected, some of them were, you know, we're just kind of a little bit random, but we said, like, there's probably an interesting thing to explore here, and so the four of us started working together and really just basically trying to reverse engineer how the grade. Of you know the Marc Benioffs and Jeff Bezos and Reed Hastings created new categories and defined them and kind of take that apart and also just draw on our personal experiences through the things that we've done in our lives and and started to put together you know this thing that we called category design, and we were the ones who labeled it. You know, the other guys remember this clearly. I, they credit me. I can't say that I remember that, but we were having a conversation, and an Al, who used to work at Macromedia, we were like halfway, three quarters of the way through the book, and he said, like, this stuff is really bugging me. It's sort of like the conversations we were having at Macromedia when we created something called Experience Design, which ended up catching on and being a big part of the industry, and I guess I was the one who piped up and said, well, maybe this is category design, and everybody's like, that's it, that's good.

Suzanne Taylor-King  6:04  
What did you call it before that?

Kevin Maney  6:05  
Well, we didn't call it anything, we were just kind

Suzanne Taylor-King  6:07  
of all with anything. Okay,

Kevin Maney  6:09  
yeah, we're just like it was this was all about how do you create category winners. And so, anyway, the result of all of that was the book Play Bigger, which came out of 2016 and set all of this in motion, and category design has become a thing we actually essentially designed the category of category design, and and now it's like a big part of the tech ecosystem.

Suzanne Taylor-King  6:32  
Yeah, I well, number one, I love the meta concept that you know designing category design is a category design, which is really cool, but more than that, I think the new book, you know, I read Play Bigger, maybe a couple years after it came out, and this new book is really based on well over 10 years of actually working with clients, and did you notice a big, you know, when you first started working with clients through this concept, what big changes did you notice? Like boots on the ground, we all know that a framework is a framework when you design it in your head, but when you actually start doing it with clients, what was the biggest shift you noticed?

Kevin Maney  7:25  
The biggest shift, I think, was so we had written Play Bigger. It was, you know, it gave people this concept of category design and the importance of it, and it made people think about it, but so the book came out, and and it immediately started resulting in like CEOs and venture capitalists and others getting in touch and saying, could you please help us do it, this is about and and so we started like I started category design advisors with another guy named Mike Daft Faust, and and we started working, doing, you know, client work, and I think the biggest thing was that we had, we had trouble shaping the discussion, because it was a little amorphous, like it was, like, I mean, the ideas were there, but there wasn't a set of like thinking tools and structures to say, like, here's what you know, here's how we can discuss this and get to this finishing point, you know, step by step. Yeah, and so I think that's what we, that's what we started working through, and doing more research. Part of it, half of it was doing more research about how categories were tapping into some of what some of the, you know, greats have written about, or in the past understanding how categories behave, and the other part of it was literally trying stuff out in the room with clients, and you know, it seems some of the things we came up with just fell flat, didn't really work, and then we found some things that were like, whoa, like that, actually, like that really drives the conversation. It's, it's really sticking. And then we would double down and like try to figure out why, and you know, refine those ideas, and all of that. All of that is what's made it into this new book.

Suzanne Taylor-King  9:16  
Well, I'm amazed, because I really think, and I've said this hundreds of times, literally, that after working with 100 clients, you'll know, you'll, you'll have so much information on your process, on your thinking, what it takes to not only teach that thinking, implement that thinking with another person, because we know what we're doing, right, we, we have all the ideas, and maybe it's an unconscious, you know, ability sometimes, and to decipher that with actual clients. Uh, I started doing something after clients, like a debrief before AI. Now AI can help me with that, but I would record my thoughts and impressions after certain steps in my program. I guess that means it's time to write a book after a certain number of clients, I guess, right, but I love the thinking here, because it, it does really get refined with boots on the ground work, and because you're not just a theory guy, you're actually out in the world doing it, I think it makes the category that you've created for yourself really stand out. Do you think that's part of the popularity of this concept that has really caught on because you're actually doing it in the world?

Kevin Maney  10:59  
It's been important, and because it's become a proof point, right? The, yeah, and what's happened is that companies go through this, and they, you know, they come out the other end, it's like they, they feel transformed, and then I mean, we, you know, we as a firm have done so little marketing, because it's basically word of mouth, I mean, one CEO tells another CEO, you guys get his call, you know, that's what happens, right? So, yeah, as, as a way to prove that it's really, you know, it really works, is you know, so much value in that,

Suzanne Taylor-King  11:33  
yeah, yeah. I feel like marketing can be this elusive concept for so many people, small to huge companies, and one of the things that has always stood out to me about category design work in general is that it doesn't depend on marketing, I mean, it is your marketing, but it doesn't, it doesn't have this feel of, oh, we're going to design your Facebook ads to make you stand out, oh, we're going to design your content plan to have you stand out, it's, it's deeper than that, and I'd love for you to speak a little bit to how CEOs or or the clients that you're working with, founders, really feel about doing that more personal work on their brand, because so many times people like think that, oh, you're going to teach me, or you're going to do my Facebook ads for me, or Google ads, or whatever, and that's going to drive this ROI for me, and I think this deeper work is more difficult for people. Well,

Kevin Maney  13:00  
it, yeah, it is. It's so, first of all, you know you're using words like marketing and brands and stuff, which is absolutely downstream for what we're doing. I mean, the first thing that we will always tell a company that calls us is, is this is strategy and it's CEO level, and because you need to understand the category you're creating, how you're framing it, you know what the, what the path is from here to five years out before you can give anybody a marketing message, you know, you have to, I mean, you're really starting with understanding what product you really should be building for the market that you see, and so it's, yeah, you know, we had, we had one client recently, a fairly large client, was just pre-IPO company, and they'd been around for 20 years, went through this process, you know, landed on something that was just felt so true to them, and and there was like maybe a dozen of these executives in the, in the conference room, and when you know, kind of everything landed, and you know, I think I said, you know, well, How does everybody feel? And this one guy who'd been with the company for like, you know, the whole time raised his hand, and he said, I feel embarrassed. It was like, why are you embarrassed? He said, well, I feel embarrassed because why couldn't what we came up with seems so obvious to us, but why couldn't we do it? And and I said, like, it's it's like trying to be your own psychologist. I mean, you sometimes you need that outside perspective and outside that that has a different lens on things to actually bring it out of you. We didn't, you know, we didn't tell them what business they were gonna, they told us, but through these tools they were able to tell us in a different way than they ever had before.

Suzanne Taylor-King  14:49  
Yeah, and that, that really, you know, opens up so much for success, already successful company. Me, so many times they're bootstrapped in the beginning, and they don't, they skip over the foundational work. I noticed that all the time. You know, what's the mission, vision, values? Where do you see yourself in five? Like, they've never thought about those things, because they're so busy running a successful company, so it's really cool.

Kevin Maney  15:25  
Yeah. Well, I'd also, I mean, they may think of them, but they don't actually like codify them, which is also part of the problem. But yeah, and you know, one of the reasons that one of the other reasons that we wrote the book that just came out, because it literally does give away everything that we do, but we, so on our category design advisors website, we have something we call office hours. It's these slots that you know anybody could sign up for, 330 met a conversation with one of us category design, and most of the people who sign up are, you know, bootstrap startups, and they can't, you know, they could not possibly afford, you know, services and all this stuff, or even the time to do it, but we want those companies to have this tool, and, and so part of, you know, doing this book was a way to kind of give that back and say, look, you know, I mean, yes, it's, you know, it's probably more helpful to have people like us in the room and driving this kind of thing, but if you can't do that, you could pick up this book and understand how to push this through your organization yourself.

Suzanne Taylor-King  16:36  
Well, I admire that, because I agree with that philosophy. When I was starting as an entrepreneur, let's just say before the internet, we don't need to talk about how many years ago there was no one for there was no books on what I was doing, so it was really just a discovery process for me. Then coming into the online space in 2010 as a coach, well, that this is totally different, and it was really the people who gave away their frameworks and their process that really helped me get started and really have been the foundation of that success, so I love that you said that, because there are so many people who can't swing working with me, it's why I have something for $97 a month. It's like a give back to people, and this book is so much that I'm only halfway through, but I already knew what it was going to be like to read it just from reading your other books, tell us a little bit about this authorship of yours, and what that journey has been. I mean, as a journalist, I'm sure you did a lot of writing, but a book is so much different and such a much bigger commitment.

Kevin Maney  18:18  
Yes, it is

Speaker 2  18:20  
me,

Kevin Maney  18:20  
and the thing you know, the thing about a book that's so different from our article is that it's, it sits on your shoulders for the entire, like, whatever, 18 months, two years, that you do it, and and it's like this way you carry around every single day, but yeah, no, I mean, my first book came out in 1995 called Mega Media Shakeout, and it was literally the first book that I think ever came out about what's going to happen as media turns digital, and it happened to land in April of 1995 just as you know, Netscape and everything else, like, hit, and everybody started to become aware of this internet thing. It was actually crazy, because I, I knew nothing about, like, speaking or being, you know, being in front of people, and suddenly, because of this book, I got pulled in front of boards and in front of 5,001st conferences, I look back, I probably was embarrassingly terrible. I had

Suzanne Taylor-King  19:28  
you were very futurist thinking in that book.

Kevin Maney  19:33  
Yeah, well, I just.. I just.. yeah. Anyway, but.. but because that had such success, it gave me an opening to do something else, and, and then I just, I followed that up with a biography about Thomas Watson, who built IBM. That was a huge critical success, and that just led to a series of, but then I found I found this path, of which I really loved, of collaborating with people that I thought were really interesting and smart. Hmm, and so I, I've now co-authored, I guess, at least more than half of the books that I've written have been co-authored with a CEO or like the Play Bigger team or venture capitalists, and that's that's a, that's been a very good path, because on you know, I get, I get to tap into their knowledge. It's a collaborative process. I'm not really just, I'm not ghost writing for them, I'm actually working with them,

Suzanne Taylor-King  20:30  
right.

Kevin Maney  20:31  
And between, and, and then they have the, they have the, you know, the money to spend in the cloud on the back end to like reduce some real marketing, which is nice, since book publishers don't do much of that anymore.

Speaker 1  20:43  
Yeah,

Kevin Maney  20:43  
so it's been, yeah, it's been actually a really, a really good path, and I'm still, still doing

Suzanne Taylor-King  20:50  
it well. That, that opens up a great question about relationships with your clients. You know, you spoke a little bit about that, you really don't do a lot of marketing for category design advisors is kind of like a word of mouth thing, and so what has the book writing collaborative process, what is that opened up, you know, as people work with you, right, they get to know you so much better, what has that opened up for referrals and just that long term relationship with clients.

Kevin Maney  21:27  
Yeah, good question. I think there's a couple of different things. It's a little bit circular. Well, yeah, so you know, I do a.. I mean, I wrote four books with Hayman Taneja, who's the CEO of General Catalyst, introduced me to General Catalyst World, you know, you know, so I've done work with a handful of GC companies, because, because of, you know, that connection, or helped by that connection, at the very least. So that certainly has happened, but the other thing that's happened is because, because I've been in the middle, I'm not, so I'm not just a consultant sitting on the outside and in. I'm in the middle of every, because, especially with the VCs, I'm in the middle of every development, you know. I stay, they're introducing me to the newest, coolest companies that are coming along. They're looking at the, you know, trying to get ahead of the trends that are happening, so I'm constantly exposed to that, and I'm bringing that into the room with the companies that we work with, and especially important in the whole category design process, because category is about how do you find a new space and frame it differently from anybody else, and so I'm exposed to so much that I can sit in the room and they can be talking about something, and I'm able to say, look, I know there are four other companies that are going to say that are out there saying the same thing. If we're going to go that path, we're just like fighting for somebody else's category, you know. We got to, we got to go in a little bit of a zigzag here, or on the other hand, able to say, like, look, I, you know, I've been a lot exposed to a lot of that space. What you're saying sounds really interesting, and do let's double down. So that's something I'm able to bring because of the, the other book work.

Suzanne Taylor-King  23:13  
Well, I think what I love about that, and why it resonates, is I've always thought that competitive intelligence is is one of the biggest assets you can spend time on as a business owner, knowing the products on the market, knowing the other companies who do what you do, not from a jealousy or envy space, but from a what do they do well? What don't they do well, and like with books, for example, there's 1000s upon 1000s of sales books. I look at the negative comments, what was a book missing that people wanted and competitive intelligence can be very, very helpful. What does that process look like with your company? Like, how do you, how do you recommend somebody dive down into that competitive intelligence work?

Kevin Maney  24:21  
Yeah, well, let me, let me tell you what I think is the most powerful thing that came out of this, you know, 10 years. So, the book is called The Category Creation Formula, for a reason, and so you mentioned, like, you know, being in the field, working with, you know, you start to learn things, and so over time, as we were doing this, you started realizing, like, okay, there's.. there seemed to be a set of patterns here. The companies that do this well think in these particular order of things, and you know, and at first it's kind of like it's a big blob here, and a big blob here, and a big blob here, you know, and you kind of like.. I kept wanting to simplify. I simplify, like, how can we get this down to something I could just put on a whiteboard and drive a discussion, and so over sort of that process, and this gets to your question about competitive intelligence too. We came up with this very simple formula called a formula, but, and I'll explain what there's three pieces to it. I'll explain what they are. So, it's context plus missing plus innovation equals a new market category, and it's very important that it's in that order, and that's not the way most companies do things, right? So, most companies, by the way, just will, for the most part, we've got this innovation, we've thought of this cool new product. Now let's figure out, like, what to do with it, right? Where, what's the, what's the market that wants it, or how do we sell it, right? So, in this process, it basically starts with, we're going to put your company, your product, everything aside. The first conversation we want to have is this thing called context, and context is everything that's happening around your target audience, and and that means what's what's changing. What are the new technologies that are coming into play that are changing things? What are the new, you know, they could be socioeconomic things that are happening, or in the Middle East may be changing your supply chains, or you know, or your costs, or who knows what of your, your target audience, social changes. We want to have a conversation about all of that, and also, you know, what, what other, you know, what other technologies are they using? What do people hate? What do people, what is actually working for them? We have that really deep discussion about this thing we call context. What starts to emerge is a way to talk about what's missing in this new context, and what's missing is usually either a new problem that's being created by that context. I mean, think of all the new problems that AI is creating as much as it's creating new solutions, right. It's creating all sorts of new problems, or are there problems that are not being adequately solved in, you know, the past context, but the new context gives us a different way to solve those, a new and different way to solve those problems much better, you know. For instance, companies with may have assembled, you know, 30 different point solutions, and now it's getting crazy trying to manage all those point solutions, and now with AI, you know, there's a way to consolidate all of that, and maybe, you know, create something that's much simpler and easier to use, more powerful, whatever. So, if you had that real that context discussion, and let's see what starts to emerge as what's missing in this new context. It becomes pretty easy to see. Okay, we could create this, this innovation, this new thing to solve this missing in this new context. And if you, if you have, if you, if you see that now, you're seeing not only are you seeing something that doesn't exist yet that needs this, but you're also seeing the truth. You're not clouding yourself with, like, I think this is, you know, cool, and so I'm going to put it out there.

Kevin Maney  28:13  
You're actually seeing something that the market is going to need and demand if you put it out there, because if you are able to tell a particular market, I understand what's happening around you, I understand what's like really frustrating you, what's missing now in this new environment, and at that point you've got those that person's attention, because like it's like okay, yeah, you understand, and if I describe this thing that should exist to solve that, then they're willing to hear you say, like, okay, now here's my product and my company, and why we're the ones that can bring this to you, and it's a much more inviting way to market something, first of all, to see the product you should build, but also then to put that message out there than just saying, like, here's my product, you figure out what to do with it, that companies do,

Suzanne Taylor-King  29:09  
yeah, and, and what I love so much here is that it's the seeing of those opportunities that this has helped me do I'm a product of learning this stuff, and it's helped me understand my ideal client in a whole new way, but also understand that I was my ideal client when I first came into the online space, and understanding that what did I want, and I just said yesterday, and you're going to laugh at this, I've created over 60 offers for myself, different, you know, things I've sold in the online space. As I grew as a coach and changed and developed, and so out of 60 offers I had four that were wildly successful, I mean wildly successful, and numerous others that sold absolutely nothing, and well, everybody thinks everything is successful that launches, it's not note to self, but those four really successful ones all had the same thing in common, the same traits in common, and the number one trait for me was that I created something that I needed myself. I couldn't find it to buy it, so I created

Speaker 1  30:51  
it.

Suzanne Taylor-King  30:53  
Huge lesson as an entrepreneur, and I think fear keeps a lot of people from creating something different. Do you notice that as well?

AI VO  31:09  
It's harder.

Suzanne Taylor-King  31:11  
It is harder, way harder.

Kevin Maney  31:13  
Look, you know, you say you see a successful market category, it's much easier to say, okay, I see that there's a big, you know, there's a big audience for that, that kind of thing. I can, I think I can build something that's a little bit faster, or 20 cheaper, or something like that, or whatever.

Speaker 1  31:32  
Yeah,

Kevin Maney  31:33  
and it becomes easier to tell people about it, because it's like it's there's a reference point, I'm making this, you know, it's like it's a better version of this, and you know, there's 1000s and 1000s of companies that do that, and are decent, or even good, really good businesses, you know, that's not to denigrate that at all, but there are a different class of, you know, interpreters, founders, CEOs who want to change the way we work and live, who want to, you know, create something new and win it over time, and it's those people that are, you know, the audience for what we, you know, what we do, because it is hard. I mean, it's a because you're basically, you're creating something that nobody's seen yet, so you have to be able to tell that story and you know, and, and can you know, convince people that there's, that there's a perhaps a problem that they didn't even know they had before, and so it's a, it's a, it's a harder path, but the rewards are greater.

Suzanne Taylor-King  32:39  
Yeah, I think the harder path has always been, you know, I love a good challenge, I love a good puzzle, and a friend said to me, you love solving problems, don't you? And I hear that in what you're saying, like you saw a problem, you also saw the solution, and what has you know with this new book, you've connected so many dots for me, because you're actually talking about the method, the framework of it, which I love, but what has that process documenting that done for your clarity?

Kevin Maney  33:26  
Documenting what is specifically,

Suzanne Taylor-King  33:28  
yeah, the framework, the what we do with clients, how to do it yourself, like actually putting it down in writing. I'm sure it was well before the book, but

Kevin Maney  33:41  
here's what I, so I, in addition to the CEOs of VCs that I've actually done a book with, I, because I've become known for that, I get, I don't know, half another dozen others a year that come to me and say, I want to, you know, I want to write a book, and I am, because I'm organizing, but here, let's talk through your some advice, whatever. And you know, so you brought up earlier, like a book is a huge project. It's big, it takes a lot of time, it's, it's a very weighty thing to take on, and, and at some point, a lot of people, or CEOs, whatever, will you know, say, but you know, I don't know if that's worth it, is like, you know, and one of the things I'll say is, like, okay, you know, yeah, you, yes, you end up at the, at the end with this thing that's pretty valuable, you have this book, it becomes a calling card, it's something that lasts for ever, basically, you know, you know, but here's what you get that you don't think about, that you get, you get discipline of thinking, because the process of having to think through your ideas, make sure that they all connect, make sure that they're clear, and putting them down in writing it, that's essentially what you're doing, you're disciplining your thinking and. You, you come out with at the end of it with a much more solid set of ideas and ways to talk about them, you know, aside from the, you know, the actual physical book itself, that is extremely valuable, and I look at, you know, I see, you know, Heman Tanejas, you know, he's out on the stump all the time, he's getting interviewed on CNBC and MS, you know, whatever, and he's, he's out, you know, giving speeches, and, and you know, and I see a lot of this, and I see how, you know, his, his language and his, the points make are all sort of coming out of the books that we wrote, not word for word, but it has, it has impacted his thinking and his way of, of speaking to the world, and it's really valuable.

Suzanne Taylor-King  35:48  
Yeah, well, I, I love, I love when I hear someone who can, off the cuff, talk about what they do in, in a different way than I heard last time. To me, that just is so prolific, and so it's almost more appealing than someone who's following the same script every time they have a conversation, and it comes up in networking a lot, that you know, if you go to the same group all the time, say it's 30 people, and everyone says the same introduction every single time, I help blank do blank, so they don't have the blank. Oh, boring, boring. I glaze over. I don't want to be there. And if you truly know what you do inside and out, I am a full believer that you can say it in 40 different ways, depending on who you're talking to.

Speaker 1  37:08  
Sure,

Suzanne Taylor-King  37:08  
and I think that is a magical skill, but, but also it's learnable with the right principles in place. So that's why I'm a huge fan of what you do, and I want to switch gears, because we have to touch on music for a second. What are you listening to right now?

Kevin Maney  37:32  
And by the way, our band is playing tonight. If anybody's

Speaker 2  37:37  
listening, is it

Kevin Maney  37:38  
in New York? There's a place called this place called Connolly's on 45th street near Times Square. We're playing at 10 o'clock tonight. We gotta, we gotta gig.

Suzanne Taylor-King  37:47  
Oh, can is there somewhere where I can find this, because I'm not in New York all that often, but there is a couple events this summer where I will be in your area, so that would be super fun,

Kevin Maney  38:01  
yeah. Well, you know, there's a.. there's a.. our band is called Total Blam Blam, and you know, we have a.. there's a Facebook page, there's an Instagram account. We always post for play, so keep an eye out. I'm gonna

Suzanne Taylor-King  38:12  
put those links in the comments as well, because I don't know. I just think you designed. who came up with the name of the band? Was it you?

Kevin Maney  38:26  
Well, it was me, but it was.. but it was.. I always.. we were when we first formed, we were big into David Bowie, all of us really. And so there's a song called Suffreguette City, and there's a line there where he says she's the total bland lab that stuck,

Suzanne Taylor-King  38:43  
yeah, yeah, and I, I love music, and I think I love most is what it does for your mood and your spirit, and it can lift you up, it can calm you down. I have my songs I listen to before I go on stage to give a talk, I, I have things that I can listen to to relax me, or you know, decompress after a long day, and I just think music is such a gift, so I love that you do that too.

Kevin Maney  39:20  
Well, thanks, and so just has a little a left turn. So, what's happened in the last, I don't know, a couple of.. so I always, since I was young, loved writing music, and there's a lot of music that I write, but of course, you know, in a band, you know, full treasure trove of songs, and in a band, you know, you only play a small fraction of those, because everybody else has to like them too, and yeah, and, and I never really seriously recorded, like, and a couple years ago I met, I got introduced to this producer in New York, I. Who's very like-minded in terms of musical tastes and things like that, but also he's a multi-instrumentalist, so he could play everything I can play, and we started recording together. Absolutely, love working with him. His name is Tony Calabro. And now, in the past couple of years, I put out - I've put out two of my own albums of songs, you know, that I've written, and we produced and created with Tony, and that has been a, you know, later in life joy, and I plan to keep doing it. It's, you know, just, yeah, I just actually love the recording process. It's very, you know, he's very creative, he adds a lot to it. Yes, really, it's great. It's wonderful.

Suzanne Taylor-King  40:43  
So glad, so glad you're doing that, and it's incredible to just witness the creativity, right? And the, you know, the way that you put your genius out into the world with different creative projects. So, thank you for being here today. Thank you for being a connection and being game for these conversations. I know my audience appreciates you and your work, and just really excited to bring more category design and your unique genius to my tribe.

Kevin Maney  41:21  
Well, thanks for having me on, Suzanne. It's always a pleasure.

Suzanne Taylor-King  41:23  
You're so welcome. I

Kevin Maney  41:25  
vote for that five time, you know.

Suzanne Taylor-King  41:27  
Okay,

Kevin Maney  41:28  
cool thing, you know. So, yeah,

Suzanne Taylor-King  41:29  
I think that's going to be a thing now, you know. If it's a thing on Saturday Night Live, that was one of my dreams when I was younger to actually be on Saturday Night Live, so my, you know, I got told that that just wasn't possible, so I went to my second career choice, which was to be a wildlife photographer, and that wasn't possible either, apparently. So somewhere along the line I ended up in the medical field, so I don't know, maybe I could bring back all of those things now, right? Oh, why not? Why not. Well, thanks again, Kevin. I will share all of your links below this video and in our show notes, and if you're in New York, check out Total Blam Blam tonight. Love it. Thank you.

Kevin Maney  42:29  
Okay. Take care.

Suzanne Taylor-King  42:30  
Bye. Thank you for tuning in to another empowering episode of Unlock Your Way. I hope you found today's discussion inspiring, and you're ready to take your business and personal growth to that next level. If you're feeling as fired up as I am and eager to unlock that full potential, I'm here to help you on your journey and provide that personalized guidance tailored to your unique goals and challenges. Simply book a one on one coaching call with me, and we'll dive deep into your business aspirations and see how we could co-create a roadmap for your success. And whether you're striving to scale an enterprise or just getting started, I'm here to support you every step of the way. To schedule your coaching call, simply visit the website at Unlock Your Way with stk.com click on the book a call button, and we'll turn your dreams into that reality. Subscribe and review on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube. Plus, you can join over 800 entrepreneurs in the Idea Lab Facebook group. Let's make success as an entrepreneur happen together. Until next time, I'm SDK. Keep dreaming big, stay focused, and most of all, have fun while you're doing it. You

AI VO  44:03  
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