Marty Neumeier / Brand Strategist. Author. Designer. Legend

Marty Neumeier is the internationally recognized author who literally wrote the book on brand strategy. His work The Brand Gap has been read by 25 million people, and Zag was named one of the top 100 business books of all time. After decades helping giants like Apple, Google, and Adobe build legendary brands, he's now disrupting the publishing industry itself with a bold new approach to bringing stories to market.

In this episode, Marty dismantles the myth that companies own their brands. The truth? Your brand lives in the minds of your customers, and they decide everything. He explains why marketing directors can't do brand strategy, why most brand extensions fail, and how the AI revolution is creating an urgent need for authentic human connection. We also dive deep into his fascinating new novel Octavo, a Renaissance thriller featuring Leonardo da Vinci that's being published using a radically different model inspired by Silicon Valley venture capital principles.

This conversation will challenge how you think about brands, creativity, technology, and the future of human relationships in an increasingly artificial world.

BIO:

Marty Neumeier is an internationally known writer, designer, and educator whose mission is bringing design principles to a world in transition. Since 1985, he has worked with creative companies like Apple, HP, Adobe, Google, and YouTube to build their brands and foster innovation. In 1996, he founded Critique Magazine, the first journal on design thinking. After writing eight influential books on brand strategy, including The Brand Gap (read by 25 million people) and Zag (named one of the top 100 business books of all time), he co-founded Level C, a brand mastery program. Now based in Mexico, he's writing thrillers in his spare time, including his latest novel Octavo, a Renaissance murder mystery featuring Leonardo da Vinci that's being published using an innovative Silicon Valley-inspired model.

LINKS:

• martyneumeier.com (Personal)
• liquidagency.com (Company)
• martyneumeier.substack.com
• levelc.org

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (07:28.002)
Hey, welcome to the Head Smacked Podcast. My name is Paul Povolny and I am excited to have another Misfit with me. have Marty Neumeyer. Marty is an internationally known writer, designer and educator. His mission is to bring the principles of design to a world in transition. In 1985, he began working with creative companies like Apple, HP, Adobe, Google and YouTube to help build their brands and foster company-wide innovation.

Marty (07:35.098)
Second, I decided. I don't know what happened to you.

Marty (07:51.482)
I think I was similar. could draw, but I don't think come to it on my own. was my mother, art school, she became a mom and dropped the whole thing, but she went to fashion school and she could draw. And she'd be sitting there on the telephone doodling while absent-mindedly, not even thinking about these heads of women. That was just absent-mindedly. to me, that was...

Paul Povolni (07:56.266)
In 1996, he founded Critique Magazine, the first journal on design thinking. And after eight books on brand strategy, he is considered by many to be the leading expert. His innovation series, The Whiteboard Interviews, including Zag, named one of the top 100 business books of all time. And The Brand Gap is a classic read by 25 million people. Several books after that, Brand Flip, Scramble, MetaSkills. And now today we're going to be talking about Octavo. Thank you very much for being here, Marty.

Marty (08:20.458)
how do you do that? And she goes, well, I'll show you. We got out a piece of paper and we drew some things and then you know what happens when you're a doodler in school and you can draw realistically or maybe dirty cartoons or whatever it is you're doing in school. Kids like they put you in the artist bucket and I love being that. I love having something that nobody else could do. So it started there and I knew I was going to be an artist because that's what they called it.

Paul Povolni (08:27.552)
Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, I've got several of the books here. you know, love, love, love your stuff often. And those are good books. I think everybody should read them. If you are even consider yourself a branding person, brand strategist, if you have not read these books, I have them on your bookshelf. You are not a full brand strategist. And so

Marty (08:48.027)
And when I got into art school, there's a new name for that graphic designer. so, but I from that course, except for a brief stint in music that I thought I might want to, I think you were the same, right? Everyone in a rock band. So I got over that and became, I think I was making money at 20 years old. I was selling my services. So I just wanted to be great, you know, really work hard at it.

Paul Povolni (08:53.374)
Just go home, just give it up. Just, just call yourself a designer. and so thank you, man, for being on. I'm looking forward to this conversation and looking forward to your book.

Paul Povolni (09:12.332)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (09:15.162)
I also learned how to write because I read that if you're a graphic designer and you don't have any control over it, your work is not totally in your control. And so I'd be very closely like ad agency style. But then it got too frustrating and I just thought, I'll just do it. So I started writing, you know, headlines and then bought long ads after a while. And then eventually profiles for communication arts and, you know, I learned longer until

Paul Povolni (09:15.426)
Yeah. Yeah. And I look forward to diving deep into it and learning more about it. And I know you're changing stuff up in how it's being published and everything. So I want to make sure we talk about that.

Paul Povolni (09:43.692)
Wow, wow.

Marty (09:44.526)
while doing all my other design stuff, studio stuff, a publisher, a magazine publisher about design with critique. So that's when I really learned how to write good and fast because I had write a hundred pages of text basically, every thing. So that's how I got into writing. I was also learning about branding and I realized that without understanding brand strategy, your design, you're kind of at the mercy of the assignment.

Paul Povolni (09:57.805)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (10:03.416)
Well, I'm looking forward to diving deep into that journey. And, you know, as you know, I like to start the podcast off just by hearing a little bit about your backstory. Read some of your bio. I do want to hear about a little bit of, you know, how it all started. Like how, how did you end up, you know, talking about branding the way you do, you know, you're often quoted, you're seen as a leading expert in the conversation about branding and brand strategy. So how did that get started? Did you, you know, first out of high school, out of college, like where, where did it all start with you in this journey?

Marty (10:14.722)
And it could fall flat because they don't know a thing about what they're doing. So unless you take a strategy part of what you're you might turn out great. You might have an award winning piece, but it just doesn't work in the marketplace because it was, it was just born wrong. We just didn't have the right ideas behind it. break, at least in terms of my, my output. and then I realized that I actually knew more about this and

Paul Povolni (10:33.998)
Yeah, you're a doodler like me, right?

Paul Povolni (10:42.502)
Well, I was a doodler. I was a creative kid. I, you know, always liked to draw pictures, couldn't focus, but I never knew how I could use my artwork in making a living.

Marty (10:43.834)
and clients were asking me how should we sell this? How should we position this product? And I just got more and more into that. Yeah, I was. Trout and Reese. I mean, way back in the David O book and I thought, he thinks about what he's doing. He's not just doing cool stuff. He actually has reasons, know. And Strat is just in the sense we know today. So Trout and Reese, I back in, they started in 1970. I happened to get one of their little

pocket-size booklet that they gave to clients called Positioning, available to the public. But people were getting these and passing them around, know. It's really kind of underground. It was a secret book. And I read that and I went, oh, well, this just changes. Probably in the early 70s, I got interested in their stuff, read all their books. It's people like, if you want to be a designer, have to read these. mean, this is like, this is business or something you hate. This is like...

Paul Povolni (11:25.976)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (11:33.974)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (11:39.694)
Ha

Marty (11:42.713)
Concept this determines the concept of your work if you don't have a business reason behind it's gonna be might be nice might win a gold medal or something, but so what you know you can't base a well if you just want to do that, it's easy business or or Positioning or or branding or that if you're you know if you have the skills and I did a lot of that in the beginning anyway Built my career on winning a lot of awards. It just wasn't enough. You know, it's like

Paul Povolni (11:54.894)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (12:01.578)
Right, right, right.

Marty (12:12.985)
I want more of the work I'm pouring my heart into lands, you know, that it does something. Then I had to learn it. And that just gave me entry into a higher level of client. You know, I was talking with Pointe and certainly marketing managers, not the people that just, but I had a seat at the table. And then know every designer should aspire to this and figuring out how to get there. I had people I knew who were designers and God of them said,

Paul Povolni (12:27.622)
Hahaha

Yeah, yeah.

Marty (12:42.2)
I said, I don't know how you learned all this stuff. I wouldn't know even know where to start at a high level to say the kinds of things that you're saying. He goes, yeah, it'll take you about 18 months. I went and Tom, took me three years to get to that level, but I wanted to share that with other designers because I thought this is something that everybody will want to do. And it turned out, yeah, they would, you know, not everybody, but a lot of next level where they had more control over their work and could get higher fees.

Paul Povolni (12:44.557)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (13:00.663)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (13:11.757)
Peace out.

Paul Povolni (13:14.915)
Wow.

Marty (13:16.236)
No.

Marty (13:20.373)
Not even good art. No how beautiful it is in that art, you know.

Marty (13:36.301)
Yeah, or they just, don't enter those folks. Those aren't real awards, okay? The addies are like you pay enough and you get some awards, volume things. The good awards, I don't know what they are now, but doing that it was Communication Arts, D and A.D. in London, it was A.I.G.A. And those were very difficult to get into and something like that. But if you're not trying to work at that level, you would bother entering.

Paul Povolni (13:43.928)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (13:48.372)
Right, right.

Marty (14:04.749)
these competitions, cost money, why would you do that? It's aspired to that, you know, this highest level of cutting edge and you want to be known for that and you see some value in that. But that's how I got clients, you know, they didn't know what on the wall. And so they expected them, don't know. So I did that.

Paul Povolni (14:11.106)
Right.

Paul Povolni (14:32.278)
Right, right, right.

Marty (14:36.825)
You could follow that definition back to Aristotle. So the definition is, for those who haven't heard it, is a brand is a person's gut feeling, an organization or a product or a service. So it's a gut feeling because people actually logically, even though they apply logic to their, you know, they defend their choices with logic. Logic plays, it's more intuitive than that.

Paul Povolni (14:58.243)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (15:01.614)
Now were you influenced by anybody in particular? Was anybody else talking about this stuff?

Marty (15:06.334)
as a communicator that you're not, there can be logic, there probably should be logic in it because people need to feel logical and they need something to hold onto. But they actually make their decisions based on or who else is using this company or this product. know, they have need to do what people like them are doing. You have to realize you're not just advertising or communicating with that person and their whole tribe. So actually one brand per tribe. If you try to reach several

Paul Povolni (15:07.746)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (15:15.34)
Right. Right.

Paul Povolni (15:36.417)
huh, yeah had that book back there.

Marty (15:36.473)
tribes, may be conflict with each other. So don't worry, just try to find your group and grow that group number one in that category. Ideally number one. One of the rules is if you can't be number one, think about maybe a where you can be number one. So as a designer, need to know what they're thinking, whether they have those kinds of ideas about what they're doing. Because if they have to do the best we can, then that's not a strategy.

Paul Povolni (15:42.222)
Like trading secret trading cards. Yeah

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (16:04.834)
Yeah.

Marty (16:04.887)
there because man they're kicking they're killing it right so let's just copy that isn't gonna work either because me too it's just too much work to make those

Paul Povolni (16:11.126)
Right, right, right.

Marty (16:19.31)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (16:22.956)
Yeah, right. And it might impress other designers and that ends up happening a lot of times.

Marty (16:30.709)
Because it's old hat, there's no surprise left. If you're doing what everybody else does, you have to think, okay, now I have a choice. I have to think about, and they'll try to figure in their minds or they'll just go with, they'll just avoid go with what they always buy or what their friends are buying. And that's it. Cause they don't want to spend a lot of time making those decisions. And so brands for purchase decisions, right? It's like, I don't want to think about same one every time.

Paul Povolni (16:32.323)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (16:56.704)
Right, right, right.

Marty (17:00.097)
Or if I want a chain, I'll make a big deal out of it and I'll compare them and I'll smell them all before. But I'll still be influenced by what I think other people are buying. And I might even go, I don't care about soap, so what's the cheapest one? You know, it might be that. Soap company, where you have to be at a customer. I mean, that's the opposite of branding. So branding is about getting the most things at the highest price. So there's enough profit.

to move on and do the cycle again and create more products because you need margin to go forward with new products. Super thin margins and expect that. And last, that is your whole concept. So everything they do is about margins and all the gift and the supply lines and they put all the work on the shoulders to do all their work for them. I mean, they cut corners every way they can. We have a company to...

Paul Povolni (17:46.528)
Wow.

Marty (17:54.358)
to play with, to work with, but at the same time, being a lower price. that's, there can only be one company that has the lowest price. And then everybody else has to use brand.

Paul Povolni (18:11.854)
Well, and it's still surprising that many designers still don't even think about it like that. And really, I would say that that design without strategy is art, you know, and, that you, it's not even good art, you know. Right, right. And so, so, you know, it's, you've got to have a strategy, you've got to have a purpose for it. And so, you know, I'm surprised that there are, and even some agencies, sadly, I've even seen agencies that designed to

Marty (18:12.408)
It is, yeah. It's, well, it really comes down to something subtler than that. Is it helping them? How well is it helping them become who they are? And that takes in psychology and a lot of other things to think about. But this is our world, you know, where we think about what kind of person would buy this? What would cause them? How would they feel good enough about it to recommend it to their friends? What we do to help that happen? How do we find that audience? All that stuff's very subtle.

Paul Povolni (18:41.07)
to satisfy other agencies or to impress other agencies, to get the awards, to get the add-is.

Marty (18:41.847)
It's really, are brand questions more than marketing questions in my mind. It's very linked to customer strategy, it's business strategy. Whereas marketing is more in the trenches. It's very complicated, takes a lot of skill to pull off this marketing program. Branding is a little more akin to business strategy. It's more like, where do we wanna play? We compete with all these other people. What do we do if

Paul Povolni (18:51.374)
You

Marty (19:10.497)
attacks us, what's our fallback position, we do. How can we avoid not getting copied? What does it take to do that? so work, and it's always changing, and so that's why directors are really not going to do very good. They think they can do brand strategy and direct marketing of a corporation at the same time. It's like, and they're very well worked together.

Paul Povolni (19:11.895)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (19:17.719)
Right.

Paul Povolni (19:36.162)
Yeah.

Marty (19:40.024)
Pardon me? Which one start? I think branding comes before everything. think, well, that's chicken and egg really. But if you don't have an idea of who your customer is for the thing you want to do, you probably already know what you want to sell, you know, at least generally. if that with an audience that isn't already taken, you're not going to get very far. You're just going to end up like lowering the price so you can compete with somebody who's already there.

Paul Povolni (19:46.098)
Yeah. Yeah. So how was your, how was your definition? Like you have a very clear definition of branding or what, what, branding is. has that changed through the years has, has marketing branding, design culture influenced how you, how you define it, or is, the definition still the same as from when you originally.

Marty (20:08.982)
The people are funny. just like, know, brand categories. have brand categories on our heads, file cabinets. And once we decide what brand little box, it's really hard, hard for us to take the thing out of that box and put in a new one. We just don't want to do it. Like, no, I have that settled. Right. I already know what I'm going to buy. So it's a valuable site. See it. It's hard to even know what's in there. It's in a black box. And so this is where the subtlety of branding comes in. it's

It's really about locking people in that way to something that is so, it's so much, it's so core to them. I mean, some people are always know themselves and they're just trying out everything, but the customers that matter is, and they don't change their minds very easily. So if that was somebody else's brand, how do you get in there? And there are ways, but it's, you have to be very bold to be good twice as different, those sorts of things. So.

fascinating sort of philosophical kind of work, very different from marketing, which is fast moving, very complicated, was definitely left brain. Not everyone can do it well, know, it's off to people that can do that. But I don't cross over just because the work itself, the work of marketing, you know, it's just so demanding. And every day is something happening that it's hard to like just

Paul Povolni (21:12.408)
Right.

Paul Povolni (21:19.842)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (21:36.162)
quiet your mind and think about something big related to the whole direction of the company and how you're going to in a company. Like how do you get people on board for something that maybe to do. So those kinds of things are, I mean it takes a special kind of person to do either job, I think.

Paul Povolni (21:42.776)
Right.

Marty (22:06.412)
Yeah. Well, this is, know, psychologists say that it's sort of a left. I think marketing is to me seems left brain complex. It's it takes a lot of it takes logic. You have to get things done. Branding is more right brain. But the thing that psychologists know is that the left brain is a bully. The left brain thinks it can. Right. And so, of course, it's going to say that's easy. I could do that.

Paul Povolni (22:07.382)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (22:12.972)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (22:23.66)
And talk about that for a moment because that seems to happen a lot where somebody sees somebody else's success and instead of it being inspiration, it's imitation. They think that if I do the same things the same way, I'll get the same success. Why doesn't that work?

Marty (22:36.504)
15 minutes a day, right? And brand people go, because brand people are not bullies. They're just more open-minded about stuff like that. And they're terrible at marketing. So that's what we need to do. And companies that have everything working, you know, have that, those relationships down. I mean, that's why they're winning. But no, we should, a person can do both, except maybe in a small company where everyone can do both of those things. And that happens. I've seen people in our

Some of them very easily go from one to another. Most of those people are already designers who run their own business. So that's why they were able to get their arms around it to work, right? It just takes less at stake and probably you can fail and nobody's so it's not like pressure is driving you to behave in a certain way. You can take the risks you want to take.

Paul Povolni (23:20.663)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:24.557)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:32.106)
Right, right.

Marty (23:41.323)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:44.364)
Yeah,

Marty (23:48.535)
Oh, yeah, I think it's the opposite. So I think the brand lives with the customer. The customer creates the brand. The company does branding. In other words, they create the raw material to create the brand, but it's out of their control at that point. The customer's going to decide. The customer decides everything about their lives. And so they make meaning your messaging, your design stuff, your ad reviewers, your products, and create something out of that.

Paul Povolni (23:50.551)
Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marty (24:17.109)
that aligns with what you want them to do. But it's not easy. Work at that all the time. But that's branding and then the results, which is how people regard you. So if you think about it more as a reputation, that's, for me that works because job is, it's to change people's minds, right? It's to get them to feel a certain way to make a decision, but give them something they love so that they go on buying it.

Paul Povolni (24:22.668)
Right.

Marty (24:46.944)
for years, they'll tell their friends. So that's what the brand does. If I were starting, well, I have started a lot of companies, but I think about, okay, I have this hunch, I want to something. Now, who are the people that might appreciate this and who aren't locked in with another company? already have it. It's not a settled matter for them. Or maybe so numb, there's nobody to compete with. The job is to nothing.

Paul Povolni (24:52.364)
Right, right.

Right. Well, and one thing that you said is that, you know, about people not buying what they need, they buy what they want and what they want is dictated how well the brand positions itself, right?

Marty (25:15.957)
with air, with white space, which is difficult on its own too because then you have to explain to people why this new thing would be super important for you even though you've never heard of it before. So that's a real challenge. Branding is more like competing with existing companies and so Is it a product problem? Do we need a bad product that's twice as good or way different? Or is it a communication problem? Succeed at this because typically you have to do something twice as competitive to be viable to win.

Paul Povolni (25:38.382)
Yeah.

Marty (25:45.58)
to get.

Paul Povolni (25:50.306)
Right, right.

Marty (25:52.375)
Yeah.

Marty (25:57.141)
Yeah.

Marty (26:01.269)
Yeah, they do brand extensions. Yeah, because they want to keep people expecting them to keep making money. My future self says we got to get over that. We just keep going and keep being, maybe they get more profitable or necessarily expand. It's because it's really hard to do. It's wasteful. Usually when you expand, you bump up against competitors that are established. So that's going to be costly. Strategists will tell you that attacking is much more, way easier to defend your.

territory then too. So it's going to cost you a lot and usually those do as well as the original thing. So if you just think, all right, so you built this many years to get it established, why are you watering it down with all these other things that are changing the meaning that they're buying? Well, because it's easier and I can get, it'll be some really shallow short-term reason for it or because our shareholders, all right, so create a new brand. Put the work in, create something that

Paul Povolni (26:54.604)
Right, right.

Yeah.

Marty (26:58.272)
invest in it, start small, grow it, know, think about it more as a garden than as as a build and then, then someone else can tear it down later. I mean, it's, it's, it's more brands. And so I'm always skeptical of any brand extension, my clients will say, okay, let's go back to, let's go back to scratch here. Why are you doing this? What if you didn't do it? No reason for doing it. Now you don't just love products, right? There's a,

Paul Povolni (27:04.248)
So which comes first?

Paul Povolni (27:08.482)
Which comes first?

Marty (27:27.671)
Is there any other way to do this? Is there a better way to do it? Are you going too far with it? Are you watering down your core branch? But I start with being very skeptical of that. But at the same time, so there's a good way to branch off and just make your core branch stronger with every branch. It's like a tree gets the stronger the trunk gets too. So you don't want a bunch of skinny trunk with a whole bunch of branches when the wind comes up.

Paul Povolni (28:01.932)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (28:08.11)
Yeah.

Marty (28:16.523)
Yeah, it's old school. They're just thinking, it's all about us. We're the company. We do it. We make the customers jump through hoops for us. Well, that's always been the strong brand. The strong brand is built around a customer, a customer, you create a much stronger, if they're, if they feel that they're in charge. So the old school, you come up with a product idea.

on your own that you want to sell because you have the capabilities or then you advertise the hell out of it which costs a lot, right? You build it and you get it out there and some people, maybe a lot of people say, yeah, okay, I'll give that a try and maybe they like it. Some of them might hit it, they might not. But anyway, they're only asked after it's released, after a whole lot of money has been. So, and if it, I mean, I've seen like the Ford Edsles, a classic example, they're so confident that they knew everything about

Paul Povolni (28:51.106)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marty (29:14.475)
the buying public, they put out a card of that people when they saw it, they threw up basically. mean, it was a horrible looking, it be a luxury car, it looked idiotic. It just wasn't because they never showed it to anyone, only themselves. they had this bubble and you know, people were leaving in droves. So that's what happens if you don't include customers, start out small and get them involved, you know, instead of saying, you just leave it to us, we'll you buy. Okay, well, you better be really good.

Paul Povolni (29:15.052)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (29:19.692)
Yeah.

Marty (29:45.946)
So the better way to do it is you get customers involved from the very beginning while you're developing the product and the messaging and all that. They build the product for you basically and they take it over. It's their field ownership of it because you're giving them exactly what they want and you're making their lives better. And they own the brand and what's good is that brands last longer. They create this brand by word of mouth. They tell everybody a public has

Paul Povolni (29:57.196)
Right, right, right. And I think a lot of people that are brand people try and be marketing people, but they don't have the skills, they don't realize that it takes a lot more than what they think. And there's a lot of marketing people that think they are branding people and they don't need a branding person, that they are doing everything that branding is, you know, and they totally miss the mark and I think they hurt themselves.

Marty (30:13.887)
an idea of what your reputation is, that reputation will take you way farther than So you've got to stop thinking about transactions and think about helping people get on with their lives because they will do all the work. In the beginning with, say, I always go back to Apple when that all went down. They didn't do a lot of advertising. What they did was amazing. But they made great products.

even though they said they didn't do any research, they did a ton of research just quietly. And they knew that everything worked before they put that print. They knew it was good. They went out with it and just like clockwork talking about it and they became so bought into it that you could offer them the exact same product, the different name on it, and they would say no. I don't trust. Branding, branding's about, so here we are entering an era where AI is gonna ruin already doing it big time.

Paul Povolni (30:48.334)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (30:58.572)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (31:03.148)
Ha ha!

Marty (31:11.255)
And then if people get a sense that all the ads they're seeing are created by machines, course, A, B testing everything, using the customer psychology against them, they're just not gonna trust the company. I wanna know who did that ad, who's that person? I always thought whenever you see a great ad campaign, in the Wall Street Journal, they talk about who did the ad, only the company is, the company's actually designing that campaign. No, there's some brilliant people in there, so let's get, let's like.

Paul Povolni (31:24.745)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (31:35.779)
Yeah.

Marty (31:41.354)
give some credit. Now we're going even further where it's not even a person. So I'm very worried about advertising and almost everything else.

Paul Povolni (31:47.736)
Right.

Paul Povolni (31:53.15)
Right. Well, there's lists at stake. You know, there's lists at stake so they can dabble.

Paul Povolni (32:01.975)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (32:09.602)
Yeah. I love what you said about people putting a brand in a box and trying to categorize it. You know, I love your definition of branding. kind of developed my own just cause I'm stubborn that way, but my definition of brand and branding, know, a brand is what people think and feel about what you say and do. And branding is everything you say and do, you know, that's the way I talk about it.

Marty (32:12.33)
Woo!

You have no idea what kind of stuff is in store for us. mean, I'm reading. I think about it in a scenario plan. If I was someone who was just pure and simple, short term, and I had AI at my disposal, how would I do it? And I would come up with some period that would actually work at the cost of flooding the world with a bunch of crap that's not real, and also destroying a lot of trust. And yeah, I could do it.

And I know now I know what to expect and it's already starting to happen like another author was saying how they put out a book and they had some success before it's a nonfiction book. put out a book, the book came out, I would say within two weeks there were other books with almost the same covers name as From the Mind of or you know something like that and putting it on Amazon and you see the book by the original author who didn't.

ever used any from totally his personal experience and great writing skills. Like it use his name, use some of the keywords from it, maybe that almost the same title. It's this it's not the something book, you know, as if it and they'll sell 50 copies or something, but it was free, almost free to do rip off something, you know, out of out of AI and get it onto Amazon. And so they do enough of flood the zone with fake crap.

Paul Povolni (33:33.708)
Yeah. Yeah.

Marty (33:43.83)
It'll steal, but it'll also confuse the hell out of customers and they'll end up buying the wrong one. So, know, ruining the author's good... That's just one... I'm paying attention to that because I'm doing a book right now and I've been predicting AI written books and up a month ago, no one believed me. None of the publishers thought it was possible. They know how much work it is.

Paul Povolni (33:49.568)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (34:27.446)
Right, right, right.

Marty (34:35.798)
Yeah, think human made or human intelligence made with human is, and I also think I predict that one of the biggest, the most well known, but one of the most solid products that will come is an AI detector or a copy sort of like a virus detector or those. but I think that's on everybody's side to say, is this human made? I think it'll be like the good housekeeping seal of approval.

Paul Povolni (34:37.24)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (35:02.498)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and once, once a company's reputation has put them in that box, this is what, what they say that you are. we see that recently companies have pushed up against that box. You know, we see it happened with Cracker Barrel. We see it with Jaguar. We see it with Bud Light. They pushed up against that box and maybe even just busted out of that box.

Marty (35:05.866)
So yeah, I love you.

Marty (35:10.07)
Let me show you this baby.

Marty (35:15.593)
So, looks like that. don't know. Title and author. Everything's missing. Actually the title is an abbreviation for the title, so everything. Spine. Why? Because this is gonna be sold on Amazon mostly, I would say, and on your book if you've got it on the Amazon page, why not use the book cover just for, do something bold instead of having a bunch of junk and, you know, just do it.

It's a tiny thing, yeah, and of course, the standing else on it. And so it's a good opportunity to write. But everybody does it, if they do it. Then it's not so amazing, is it?

Another thing I'm kind of proud of here, I'm going to brag a little bit. I think this is a first. So right over where it says, a novel, as the first sentence of the story is on the spine. My name is Scarlett. It's not my real name and this isn't how I sound. So, yeah, selling copy. Why should there be? If you're buying it, I mean, you're not going to see the back. So everything's there on the right. So opportunity to to zag.

And the reason is because, just for fun to be kind of a jerk, nobody's done it in my tale, like why not? But in the, the novel, everyone who writes novels is very aware of the importance of the first sentence of a story. It's written about the first sentence or the first paragraph. And so this is just a little nod to everybody who knows, like, oh, that's pretty clever.

Paul Povolni (36:40.59)
Yeah.

Marty (36:54.998)
Yeah, it starts out with this woman. She's incognito. she took because she feels like she's lost in translation from the movie. Also can't, she has difficulty writing. She's assigned, but she's, she has difficulty writing. It's called dysgraphia. So it's easier for her just to send voice tape, voice tape files. So she'll, she's trying to get her book published. And that's what this first thing is about is.

Paul Povolni (37:17.74)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marty (37:24.201)
She's got, she found this manuscript with her colleague and it's super important. It's gonna change everything. So they know they've got something and they're gonna try to just like browbeat this publisher into getting a really good deal and making him take this even though it's a dangerous thing to do. It's like it's a stolen manuscript. For sake of society to publish this thing because it's too important to fall into the wrong hands.

So she's playing tough and she puts on where she's acting tougher than she really is. But we as the readers can see that it's a little bit forced. So that's her personality. The reason I did that, mean everything I put into the book, the whole way I wrote the book, and Voice Files is just one, is to do something with the existing technology. So audiobooks for example are kicking butt their time.

Paul Povolni (37:56.854)
Right, right, right. Well, and I think, I think, you know, with brands like Cracker Barrel, know, Bud Light, Jaguar, I think they, they disobeyed your core definition of branding, right? They thought they owned the brand. And so they, so they did things that people told them that's off brand and they felt the feedback or the kickback or the pushback from before that, right?

Marty (38:21.685)
It's not a big market, but it's a growing market and you can get this, you can create excitement. And they really, it hasn't reached its peak yet of what you can do with an audio book. So I decided I'd push the audio book a little further and I would write the print book so that it's a natural audio book. So if she's sending all these voice files to her publisher and that's how, then all I do is use those voicemails as the audio book. It's the actual people.

Paul Povolni (38:30.103)
Yeah.

Marty (38:51.424)
who are doing this words to the publisher and he just prints it in the book and he just makes an audiobook. I think that's a first. The other thing is that allows for a full cast audio that's acted and not narrated. most audiobooks are narrated, right? Somebody reads a book and he said, you're narrating that. Well, there's none of that here because it's just the person, sound effects in the background. And there's a little bit of narration from the publisher back.

Paul Povolni (39:05.792)
Right, right.

Marty (39:20.787)
to the two women who he just sends a brief email. So those have to be narrated. Their correspondence with him is all voice files. So a very interesting audiobook, but also a very interesting, I probably would never have thought of that unless I went off and did something really strange like that. So now I have this problem. Force yourself to do something wrong, right? And you try to make it right.

Paul Povolni (39:26.136)
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (39:40.535)
You

Marty (39:49.679)
You try to make it good. And so there's no model for this. And so I had to figure out on the fly, how is this going to be interesting? Someone just talking. Well, they have to be interesting people. There has to be some content, and it can't be just people just talking like normal people. They have to be brilliant and somewhat. Things have to happen in the story that gets your interest and makes you worry about these characters, all the usual stuff. And then there's special typography to be able to pull this off in the book.

Paul Povolni (39:51.586)
Right.

Paul Povolni (40:11.371)
Right.

Paul Povolni (40:14.668)
Right, right.

Marty (40:18.005)
that I love typography. Whole story is about typography too, so there's meta meta thing happening. It takes place in Renaissance when book publishing was just starting. The Gutenberg Press was, started a revolution, and the Gutenberg Press was the beginning of technology, mass production before books. Everything was done by hand. So that started the Industrial Revolution essentially. So we go back to then.

to see what they were dealing with. So then I just create the story where Leonardo da Vinci, who ends up the main character, he doesn't do a lot of, but he's the focus of this. And it's about him trying to get his notebooks published, which he always wanted to do, those big notebooks you see. Everyone could read them. He wanted to be part of the printing revolution. He wanted to get his ideas out there, the work. And finally,

Paul Povolni (40:58.327)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (41:08.407)
Yeah.

Marty (41:15.048)
his young assistant who's 15 says we just need to do this why don't we go talk to the printer you know so they go to the all-dine press the greatest printer in Venice they go there in horseback when they get there there's a murder a murder has happened just that morning just before they walk in there's a crowd of people trying to stick their head through the door of the print shop in Venice and they go in there there's a man crucified to the printing press through his hands

Paul Povolni (41:20.854)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (41:31.734)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (41:44.721)
And there's type all over the floor, metal type. And murder scene, essentially. And then you get to meet the real Leonardo. He suddenly becomes Sherlock Holmes before there was any... I mean, he is just so smart. And he figures all that out just by what he's seeing, you know. And so that's the story. So they learn a lot, the whole book is like solving this murder because if they don't solve it, that press is not going to be reopened and he won't be able to print his book, print it.

Paul Povolni (41:52.032)
Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty powerful.

Yeah.

Marty (42:12.723)
So that's the central story and then the two women are telling you the story, slate the book and vet it across Northern Italy. They have to go to all the places and check out whether this story is true before the publisher is ever going to say yes, we'll print this as truth. So a lot of these concepts in the book are really market the book and what it can do when it starts splitting into different products. So it changes audio books or does something new with an idea of how to do something.

Paul Povolni (42:16.896)
Algorithms, yeah.

Paul Povolni (42:26.296)
Yeah. Right.

Paul Povolni (42:40.577)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marty (42:41.109)
with it for e-books that makes a different kind of e-book. And then if it ever becomes a movie, which is out of my control, that will make it a unique movie experience. There's two, I don't know, I'm really talking a lot about this because I'm really into it. And I can see your eyes glazed over. I think I'll stop here.

Paul Povolni (42:47.459)
Right.

Paul Povolni (42:58.178)
Yeah. Well, I think.

Marty (43:02.751)
Okay.

Paul Povolni (43:03.382)
Yeah. Well, I think you're, I think the idea of zicking where everybody's zagging is, is so prime for now because people are getting weary of AI generated content. you know, I found out somebody that I follow, you know, who's a marketing person. said they proudly boasted, yeah, all my emails that I send out are all AI generated and I unsubscribe. I unsubscribe. I'm like, I don't care if, you know, I don't need AI generated stuff. and.

Marty (43:16.703)
That's it.

Marty (43:22.728)
Okay, now this gets into branding and the marketing concept.

If you're not paying attention to publishing, won't know all this, but publishing is becoming sort of monopolized by the big top five publishers because there's not enough money to support a whole lot of little ones, but also they can get away with it. And so, and they tend to invest money in a book they think is going to, they're not interested in books that like, you know, 20 years later don't care about that. It's got to be a...

Paul Povolni (43:58.072)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (43:58.78)
a best seller so they can recoup their however much they in marketing and promotion and book. So that's how they think. So how do they pick a winner? have to pick a winner. This book is going to be a home run and then they have to sell a tutorial board and it's got to be clear cut to be a big winner. So what that does for books is it narrows it down to our celebrities who already have a giant following, probably don't need the money.

And then the authors who already have a big reputation and are just predict if Patterson puts out another thriller, he's going to sell a bunch of those books. But there aren't that many of those. So most of the books tend to go to celebrities or influencers. They don't make back their advance because the people choose a clue as to whether they're going to sell or not. And they don't make an effort to find that out. They just take a book, they dump a bunch of money in it, and they want to...

Paul Povolni (44:35.533)
Wow.

Marty (44:57.749)
bombs they just go well okay it's one of the bombs and they figure five makes a decent profit and sometimes they hit it but typically the books that we just keep going back to if they were debuts they were turned down by everybody for sure if they were done by already successful authors well then that was a safe bet but but no one can predict in the business can predict so if you sell and

Paul Povolni (45:00.364)
Wow, wow, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:05.944)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Marty (45:27.054)
I would say more than on Amazon only sell less than 12 copies. Three years worth of I know it's hard to get your head around. So attracted to this project of learning how to do this in a different way is just because the challenge of it is overwhelming. mean, there's dealing with the half a million books that come out every year. You're competing with people that been buying forever and are still in the... So you got to...

Paul Povolni (45:29.069)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (45:33.966)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:38.58)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:50.87)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's, go ahead. Yeah. Well, and that's, I think that, yeah. Well, and think that's the opportunity there to, to say where everybody's digging is, is to humanize things is, is looking at ways to bring humanity, bring, bring people, bring personality, bring the human element back to what you do, whether it's in your advertising, your branding, your, whatever it is, is there's a, I think there's a ripe opportunity for people to.

Marty (45:54.81)
It just gets harder and harder every year to make beyond selling them, you know, a few thousand copies, which is hardly worth it from a... ...rate. Making 20 cents an hour or something. But if you really want to... Yeah.

Paul Povolni (46:18.328)
to say, and I don't even know how the language is going to be or how it's going to be talked about, that it's like we have it made in China, made in Taiwan, made by human is going to be a new selling point.

Marty (46:22.068)
I think I'm doing this for everybody else. I, at this point in my life, I don't have enough time to devote to indie publishing my own books because it's a lot of if you build a company around the structure that I'm creating. So anybody could do it if they're dead. In a different way than the big five do it. So what they do is they put all the money up front and then they win or lose. They just roll the dice.

I think a better way is to use the Silicon Valley venture capitalist method where you do it the other way around. You start a viable product, something that might work, and you build it up into something that has an audience and you follow that audience. Eventually, you might get to a point where you produce a book like this. I don't know if you can see this. It's got deckle edges and stuff. A book like this would be, I wouldn't just come out with this first and go, oh, people will love the feeling of the book and they'll buy it. No, it doesn't work that way.

Paul Povolni (47:13.866)
Right, right, right. So you talked about book publishing and so I do want to talk about your new book, Octavo, you're doing that a little differently. So what are you doing different about it?

Marty (47:19.701)
I would do this if I had a huge audience clamoring for, that would be the end of the cycle, not the beginning. So that's what publishers are doing. They're putting out a hardcover book, which costs a lot to produce, and going to the cheaper and cheaper ones to sort of catch everybody else. I do it the opposite. I'm doing it the opposite. I'll start out writing a draft. When I get it to a readable form, I'll send it out to 50 or 100 people that I think are in the audience, and I'll give feedback. These are people that volunteer to read it. They want to read it.

Paul Povolni (47:25.61)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (47:33.322)
Love it. Love it.

Paul Povolni (47:38.242)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (47:46.518)
Spine, yeah.

Marty (47:48.116)
they like my art. And then I go and I interview them one by one. I ask them where did they stop reading? Was there any part of, where did they perk up and go, wow, now I'm into it, right? I want to know all those things before I go and do a second draft. So they're already in my, sort of a reverse funnel, right? Starting with the core people and they're helping out. might do another round of 100 people. Okay, and then, you know, I'll go ahead and produce once I'm satisfied that

Paul Povolni (48:06.806)
Yeah. Well, and it's also readable at a very small scale. You know, so when people are looking at it on their phone, they can spot it easily. It's almost like an icon.

Marty (48:17.938)
it's already a hit, at least for some people, they're gonna buy it. I'll put it out in the cheapest possible way. I'll test it like that. on October 14th, a print on demand soft cover, a print on demand hard cover, which means there's no inventory, you just produce it as somebody buys it, an audio book, which is basically bits, same thing there. There's no production costs in those.

Paul Povolni (48:19.373)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (48:29.038)
But I'll point back to say Marty did it first.

Paul Povolni (48:43.319)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (48:46.17)
sent out or produced on demand. So it's not costing me that much. It's a lot of work up to that point, but it's not costing me that much. Then I'll see how it goes. If I run into somebody I made a mistake and I said something that's just not political or suddenly is not political, it was when I wrote it. Now that happens to people. Pull it off and change it, you know, before it gets really bad. I'm not going to double down words. It's like, no, if I said something I didn't mean to say. So

Paul Povolni (48:47.843)
yes. Love it.

Paul Povolni (49:00.224)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (49:05.751)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (49:15.442)
I'll go back and see if I can change it and also try to make it little stronger at the same time. Okay, so if those take off, if enough people write Amazon reviews in the first month, that can help you along this path as you kind of spread out and find more people. A lot of podcasts like this, if the books start selling in the New York, that doesn't happen really. There's nothing you can do to make that happen except be already, it could happen.

Paul Povolni (49:17.858)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (49:30.754)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (49:39.756)
That's a great opening line too.

Marty (49:44.979)
Okay, something like that. Then I off and put that out there, right? It just goes up and up. And then someone may be interested in taking it on as a movie project, right? They go, that book is really doing some business. I think I like to do that. So that's something I would love to be involved in, but that's a huge project. It could go there. And really that is the whole idea for me would be to get it from a paperback to a movie.

Paul Povolni (49:55.853)
Yeah.

Marty (50:15.395)
And the chances are very slim. mean, one in 5,000 or something, if you're good at it. So, well, yeah. Thanks. Where I'm using my brand experience to build a book and the structure together and the product itself. I'm telling a story that I want to tell. It's a story that I think other people want to cut it in different forms. And I've got ideas for those different forms so that

However it gets to people, there's something new and fresh about it. And that, right, in a way that's not comfortable, right? Now I have to think about, through to myself, write a good book that's not, it's gonna stretch people, the audience, in a way that can do all these other things. So the way I would, if I were writing and indie publishing, I would always have those two things work together.

Paul Povolni (50:45.089)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (51:02.882)
Yeah.

Marty (51:14.1)
and the publishing model work as a whole, right? Because I have control over that and I know how to do it. Now, having said all that, that doesn't mean it's gonna even work. It may be just like a lot of books where, I'll get some buzz in the beginning because I've got all the things in place, but that doesn't mean it's gonna last. There's just too many unknowns involved. There's something happening in the news, another book could come along with Leonardo da Vinci, you know.

and I take everybody, you know, all those things can happen. I look at it as the best lottery ticket I can buy. And so that's what I'm doing and I'm sharing all this as I go on my sub stack. So start gathering an audience. You can read it for free. It's the serializing it and they end in two weeks. So anybody out there who wants to read it for free,

Paul Povolni (52:04.354)
Yeah.

Marty (52:11.719)
can binge the whole thing until October 14th and it's coming off of the free side and it's going on the paid side of my self probably forever so if you want to subscribe to the other stuff I'm writing about you'll get the book for free. of sort of this complex web of brand elements and I won't bore you with all the other stuff but it's been a little to put together so I'm enjoying it.

Paul Povolni (52:13.452)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (52:24.588)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (52:31.608)
Right.

Paul Povolni (52:53.282)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (52:56.628)
Yeah, school way, just by hand, which I like to do. like one thing I'm not crazy about with technology these days and how it's doing everything for you is that it's removing relationship. I think I was just being boiled like a frog for all these years and going along to Silicon Valley to be part of that back in 1984, 1985. But now I think it's gone too far to say that.

Paul Povolni (53:07.88)
Right, right, right. It's incredible how creativity happens that way, is something just... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Marty (53:26.705)
And I think it's making from each other. They're they're substituting machines and software for human relationships. the results have not been good. And so, and I've really seen that moving from, I live now, you know, a nice small town. And it's a completely, everyone talks to each other. They're very kind to each other. They're thoughtful. They're friendly.

Paul Povolni (53:34.03)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (53:41.155)
Yeah.

Marty (53:53.211)
Even when you drive on the street, people will always look for ways to let you go first. Any excuse, they'll stop. It's just the pace of life. It's like a human network, okay? So people need each other and they do things for each other. And we used to do that too when I was a kid. pretty quickly with TV and everything else, we started to get more tuned into non-human things. But coming back here, it's just been so delightful.

Paul Povolni (54:19.286)
Right, right. Yeah.

Marty (54:22.489)
And I don't know why we have to have like, everything has to be mediated by a machine. It doesn't make any sense. So we have to look for ways to just be human with each other and they're in person because there's a huge difference. Don't, you know, use the AI has been so great. AI and Google and everything for just bringing the information to really benefit from that. I've used Wikipedia more than anybody probably. And it leads you to all kinds of other good.

Paul Povolni (54:27.02)
Wow.

Marty (54:51.503)
human sources that you can learn from, but it's the learning that counts, not the doing it easily. That's not going to leave you with anything. That's just learning how to fish. want to, know. So my guess is that, I'll just say this for free. into a time of greater orality is the word, where we, there's more emphasis on Jen, because we can't trust what's being produced. It's not real. So your ability to talk and be interesting.

Paul Povolni (54:52.386)
Right, right, yeah.

Marty (55:21.491)
not like what I'm doing, but really interesting. It's going to be, if you want to be anything in this world, you're have to do it live. You're going to have to be, you have to think on your feet. You're to have to have ideas. You're to have to be human. You're have to be kind. All these virtues that we kind of were able to leave behind with technology, we're going to have, these are going to become very important. So that's my prediction and really soon, but I think it'll.

Paul Povolni (55:36.899)
Wow.

Marty (55:49.19)
I think we're starting to see the need for it and I think within 25 years we'll see a lot more people just putting down their phones, doing improv, hanging out together, having real conversation on

Paul Povolni (56:02.112)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (56:28.012)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (56:30.778)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (56:32.279)
Yeah.

Marty (56:42.642)
Yeah, and Eda's. Well, mean, that is amazing. I think it would be thrilling to be in on that work. I think that's where some of the real creativity is having, for their own creativity, I don't think are getting the best out of it. I think it creates a dependence. Because you're not learning enough yourself. And so,

Paul Povolni (57:01.164)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (57:06.798)
It's amazing. And I've listened to some of the voice files. I've started listening to those and just incredibly well produced, very well produced, very engaging. And so I look forward to continuing listening to those. so even in releasing those, the book launches, I think October the 14th, somewhere around there, but you've released those. Why did you release those before the book was even coming out?

Marty (57:11.411)
do though and as long as it stays kind of in an infrastructure role, we have to sort of push it back from creative stuff and say, wait a minute, I think I'd rather think through this myself. I need to learn these things myself. I want to talk to friends who I trust. All these things are, but not to everybody and that's what worries me. think, you you and I and probably everybody that's listening here is going, yeah, yeah, we know that. But that's more like maybe 5 % of the world.

We're probably pretty educated, I would say. There's a lot of people that just are helpless. I mean, they're not that educated. They're hurting for some reason, and they're grasping for a little better. And it's just a perfect setup to be taken over by the people who own this technology. So, and right now we're in a history where there's a lot of inequality and it seems to be getting worse. And this is the very time AI is coming out.

Paul Povolni (58:00.728)
Hmm.

Marty (58:11.558)
So naturally people are going to try to grab that power and control everyone. It's the perfect time. So it's steroids basically. So people like Elon Musk come to mind, but all the brolegarks. They're seeing, they're seeing, well, this is our moment. I mean, if we don't grab this, well, first of all, I'll be out of business if they don't compete. So they're all fighting to see who can own the world basically through technology.

Paul Povolni (58:14.158)
They don't care about the long tail, right?

Paul Povolni (58:29.518)
Yeah.

Marty (58:38.418)
And it's just a really simple thing for people to say, well, wait, I don't want to do that. I want to stay free. I don't want to be a tech slave. Sorry.

Paul Povolni (59:14.154)
Right, right.

Marty (59:18.163)
I'm sick, yeah. I will make us sick and it's already showing that it has that potential. And it's probably, you know, not as bad as it seems because everything in the news always makes it seem bigger than it is. But I do think it's, and so we have to, you know, put the brakes on. It's like we have a, we're really good with the accelerator. And I think it's, we've been trained to think everything in technology is going to be amazing because...

Paul Povolni (59:30.103)
Yeah.

Marty (59:43.538)
in the 80s where no one trusted technology. They didn't know what a personal computer was. personal computers and phones and stuff. And a lot of people missed out on that revolution because the idea of it or anything. So they stayed away. A lot of investors, same thing. I don't understand it. I'm not going to put my money into that. And then they lost out. Now it's like fabulously rich and everybody wants to be the first to use the new thing.

Paul Povolni (01:00:01.911)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (01:00:11.834)
trusting that it's going to be as helpful and positive as the original stuff like that. And I don't think it is. So this is just all about power and money. And it's to watch this happen. And I'm just sitting on the front porch in my rocker at this stage.

Paul Povolni (01:00:26.615)
Wow.

Wow.

Marty (01:00:37.67)
Well, yes, I decided to write about this because I think we're going through the Renaissance. That big of a change. The Renaissance was not a polite era. It wasn't all pretty and, you know, beautiful paintings and sculptures. There were some those throats. was, it was, your lifespan was the hatred going around, the fear of new things. Very similar to what we're going through now. And I so I wanted to explore that.

Paul Povolni (01:00:41.016)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:00:51.118)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Marty (01:01:07.056)
and see if there are lessons and the lessons were there. And I got them all from Leonardo. There were not a lot of writings by him except for his notebooks and you can get a lot there, but he's really kind of formal and practical in his notebooks. don't get like, although we've got some letters from him and he's a much different person when he's just writing to us. He's funny, he's lighthearted, he's kind of funny. And that's the Leonardo that I wanted to capture, the real one.

Paul Povolni (01:01:09.44)
Yeah, yeah.

Well, I was going to ask now, do you see the way you're doing this as a template for publishing going forward? Is this unique to you? Can anybody do it? Where are you seeing this in the history of book publishing?

Marty (01:01:36.634)
And so I had to kind of interpret that. other thing I Leonardo is essentially a designer before they had that word. There was no role of being a designer, but that's what he was. If you combine technology and art into something that is practical, you're a designer. And he was one of the first genius designers. And so all the people in that era, the way they ran their businesses, very similar to what we do today. And I have a book on all the studios.

Paul Povolni (01:01:46.702)
Yeah.

Marty (01:02:06.226)
Florence from that period. The square footage, how many employees, how much money they made, how much money they spent, all that kind of stuff. They were better at it than we are now, they, they also collect. So, but I think, I know what it is because it's so much like, you know, running a studio and he's just, he's doing it on this way higher level. You know, he was an atheist. He was gay.

He was left-handed. All the things that weren't popular at the time, he would fit in perfectly today. He would have all the attributes that we're familiar with. But then, he had to kind of keep it quiet. I wouldn't say he's in the closet. He never went out with any women. He didn't have any wives. So that's very interesting to kind of tease that out. Think the way he thought would be very useful to us today, having to navigate this world.

Paul Povolni (01:02:41.758)
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:02:52.662)
Right, right.

Marty (01:03:03.218)
that's revolutionary. People are dying in it because of the changes. So if you were a publisher, you could be given 20 drops on the strapado, which is this thing where they tie your arms behind your back and they put a rope back there and they drop you off and it dislocates your shoulders and you live. And they do that 20 Publishing a book, you bastard. Why? Because they power the church and the courts did not want people learning stuff. We're kind of coming into a similar

Paul Povolni (01:03:16.526)
Yeah.

Marty (01:03:32.581)
territory. Google doesn't want you to learn anything. They want you to be addicted to their version of when you go look something up, you get the AI version past that. so the prediction I have is that we're going to be buying a lot of paper books where we can't be surveilled if things keep going the way they are, ifcratic. And our freedom is curtailed. We're like, unbelievably. So not something I ever thought would happen. You can't be tracked with a book.

Paul Povolni (01:03:35.564)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:04:01.388)
Yeah.

Marty (01:04:02.065)
I don't feel like books are bad. There's no lie. They can't change your book. can't change the title like Kindle does. They'll change it. If something's been banned, they'll change some words you don't get. And it's on your... You own the license to read it, but you don't own that book. So, the power is just happily to all these companies. When it starts to turn bad, you know?

Paul Povolni (01:04:19.33)
Yeah, yeah.

Marty (01:04:31.983)
And if, let's say AI doesn't make the amount of money that all these investors hope it does, or are they gonna pound on these companies to make money any way they can, even at expense? That's the kind of thing I worry about. So, luxury of worrying about that stuff because I don't have to make, I don't have to work in a studio anymore, I don't have have students, you know?

Paul Povolni (01:04:52.846)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:05:04.311)
Yeah.

Marty (01:05:08.047)
A real person. He was a foodie. He loved to cut. He was dyslexic and he didn't know Latin.

Think about that for a while. He was unschooled because he was a bastard. nobody was supporting his uncle, took care of him, but he wasn't allowed to go to the good school of peasants. So he had to figure out everything on his own. He was a snappy dresser, like really had an eye for fabrics, colors, everything. When he walked down the street, there was nobody like him. He was charming. He played music. He wrote songs.

The guy was really brilliant, but I think what he really did for us is all this, the paintings are good, but it's more like the painting technique in his sense of the depth of his colors, the pigments that he used, stuff that he had been developing. The science part of his art is...

Paul Povolni (01:05:53.602)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:06:12.386)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:06:27.128)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:06:35.424)
Yeah, but you've, but you've thought about it. And so, so, so who would you see as a director for it?

Paul Povolni (01:07:15.446)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:07:48.099)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:08:05.036)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:08:15.366)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (01:08:29.08)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:08:53.633)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:09:20.886)
Yeah. Well, it's been amazing. Yeah. Well, it's, it's been amazing to hear that process too, because it's almost like you're, you're very much doing a traditional analog version of what the, digital marketing does with things going viral and the algorithm, you know, first it shows it to a few people. If few people like it, then it shows it to more people, you know? And so you're just kind of doing the, the analog version of that, which is kind of. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:10:31.917)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:11:13.356)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:11:36.216)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:12:14.082)
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:12:24.202)
Hahaha!

Paul Povolni (01:12:37.666)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:12:55.363)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:13:09.101)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:13:32.982)
Yeah, yeah, I think so. think there's going to be a rebellion of people that are going to hit a tipping point of, I'm tired of AI and fakeness and not being able to trust and not being able to know something's real. I need people. I need humans. need, you know, you

information with meat. know, need living organic beings to be in my presence and for me to engage with, as opposed to this digital world that is enjoyable. right now it's almost like it's a cub, a lion cub, that we're enjoying playing with. And that lion's going to grow up and then we're going to be like, wow, it bites. It bites and it can hurt us.

Paul Povolni (01:15:47.66)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:16:06.028)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:16:10.626)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:16:31.02)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:16:39.488)
Yeah, yeah, right. Right.

Right. Well, and I think those, think there are people who just go with, go with the flow. mean, there's, there's really healthy food out there. There's really healthy choices they can make, but there are some people that they like fast food and they're not going to change anything, even though they know it's destroying their bodies. And so I think even with technology and things like that, there are people that are just going to go with the flow and not really care. Just, just take whatever comes and then they kind of wake up one moment and be

I'm sick. I'm not healthy.

Paul Povolni (01:17:28.086)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:17:39.47)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:17:53.358)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:18:44.334)
Well, and I'm sure a lot of that stuff is influenced even in your book and what you're doing with the book and some, you know.

Paul Povolni (01:19:09.366)
Right, and helps the chord music, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:19:33.388)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:20:01.208)
Hahaha

Paul Povolni (01:20:27.309)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:20:54.4)
Yeah, wow.

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:21:22.197)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:22:15.38)
wow.

my goodness. Yeah.

Wow. Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:22:30.284)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:22:40.055)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:22:46.753)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:22:56.429)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:23:12.992)
Right, right, right. Yeah, you kind of have bad internet connection with the book either.

Right.

Paul Povolni (01:23:31.661)
wow.

Paul Povolni (01:23:41.356)
Wow, wow.

Paul Povolni (01:23:49.208)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:24:17.966)
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting what you said there about Leonardo being kind of the first graphic communicator or, you know, that what he did was so revolutionary in his day. And capturing that in a book, I think, is awesome to kind of let people relook at him as a character and how different he was from his culture.

Paul Povolni (01:24:49.965)
Ha ha ha ha.

Paul Povolni (01:24:59.788)
Wow. Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:25:23.981)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:25:29.038)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:26:08.588)
Wow, yeah.

Right, Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:26:33.389)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:26:37.678)
Ha

Paul Povolni (01:26:46.326)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:27:04.557)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (01:27:15.949)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:27:21.132)
Yeah. Now you had mentioned, you know, it's gone from your laptop screen and, you know, maybe at some point we'll go to the big screen. Who do you see directing this?

Paul Povolni (01:27:46.431)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:28:01.582)
The later years,

Paul Povolni (01:28:20.727)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:28:27.47)
Yeah. Now, did you have anybody in particular?

Paul Povolni (01:28:35.605)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:28:43.064)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:28:56.876)
Right, Now, did you have anybody in particular in mind as you were writing the characters or like whether an actor or a historical person aside from the actual person that they're portraying?

Paul Povolni (01:29:15.852)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:29:34.85)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:29:53.197)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:30:12.984)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:30:19.372)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:30:29.294)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:30:42.7)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:31:22.849)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:31:33.622)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:31:39.384)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:31:59.776)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:32:24.908)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:32:31.576)
It feels right.

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:32:43.382)
So who is your audience for this book?

Paul Povolni (01:33:08.259)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:33:23.297)
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:33:31.095)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:34:09.57)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:34:42.422)
Right,

Paul Povolni (01:34:47.832)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:34:51.106)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:35:14.06)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:35:19.244)
Yeah. Well, yeah, well, I look forward to I've got a long trip coming up, so I look forward to checking out the.

Paul Povolni (01:35:32.134)
Yeah, I've got a long trip coming up. So I look forward to listening to those audio voice, voice audio things. And well, man, this has been amazing. What a great conversation. So, so much great, great stuff to to take note of, to get inspired by. One of the things that I like to ask us as we wrap up is what's what's a head smack or a question that you wish I'd asked you?

Paul Povolni (01:36:15.383)
You

Paul Povolni (01:37:05.582)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:37:28.694)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:37:39.863)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:37:49.922)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:38:13.112)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:38:16.504)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:38:45.846)
Right, right, right, right. Well, Marty, this has been amazing. If people want to get a hold of you, they can go to martinyumayo.substack.com and they can listen to the Scarlet Files there. They can check those out. And if they're interested in branding, they can definitely look at your master classes on levelc.org. And I encourage them to check both of those out. Definitely get the books. It'll change you as a designer, as a creative.

Even as a marketer, as any kind of a business leader, to have some of these books in your library and reference them often, it'll take you to the next level. Thank you very much, Marty. This has been wonderful.

Paul Povolni (01:39:27.32)
Take care.