Andy Starr / Co-Founder Level C. Brand Architect. Strategy Sparring Partner. TEDx Speaker

Andy Starr is one of the rare minds operating at the true intersection of strategy, creativity, and business design — and he is not interested in the surface-level version of any of them. 

As co-founder and managing partner of Level C, the world's most visionary branding education program, Andy built something genuinely unusual: a school for how to think, created alongside iconic brand author and strategist Marty Neumeier. 

In this episode, Andy shares his unconventional origin story — musician, literature student, finance professional, recovering law student — and how a single book handed to him by the right person at the right moment changed the entire trajectory of his career. 

He breaks down why brand strategy has become dangerously commoditized, why AI is a tool built for averages in a discipline that demands advantage, and why the practitioners who will win in the years ahead are the ones developing taste, judgment, and the courage to think non-linearly. 

This is a bold, unfiltered conversation about what it really takes to do this work at the highest level.

GUEST BIO:

Andy Starr is co-founder and managing partner of Level C, a school of masterclasses and critiques in brand and business design that he built alongside international brand expert and author Marty Neumeier. His path to that role is anything but conventional: a trained musician who studied English Literature as an undergraduate, Andy worked in finance and studied law before entering the world of brand — and the detour through each of those disciplines sharpened the cross-trained thinking that now defines his approach. Born in Philadelphia and currently living in Vienna, Austria, Andy is also a top-1% TEDx speaker, an MBA professor at a European university, a co-founder of an LA-based public safety tech company, and a self-described C-suite sparring partner for select clients. He describes himself as a "provocateur-for-hire" at the intersection of education, business, and brand — helping clients outmaneuver competition and conditions in their markets and make their marketing, advertising, and PR work better, land stronger, and drive real results. Through Level C's progressive series of masterclasses, Andy and Marty are training a new generation of strategic thinkers — people who know not just what brand is, but how to actually use it.

LINK: Level C

Paul Povolni (Voppa) is the founder of Voppa Creative and a creative leader with over 30 years of experience in brand strategy and design. Based in Jackson, Mississippi, he has worked with clients internationally, leading teams in award-winning branding while serving as a coach and speaker. Paul delivers workshops and keynotes on brand strategy, creative thinking, and organizational culture, and hosts The Headsmack Podcast: Conversations with Misfits. His work centers on helping organizations lead with Clarity, Creativity, and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Voppa Creative Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (07:43.933)

Hey, welcome to the Headsmack Podcast. My name is Paul Povolni and I am excited to have another Miss Fit with me. I have Andy Starr. Andy is co-founder and managing partner of Level C. He's a musician and recovering law student and top 1 % TEDx talker, a co-founder of an LA based public safety tech brand and MBA professor at an EU university and plays the role of C-suite sparring partner for select clients born in Philly and being bad in Austria. Andy, how you doing, man?

Andy Starr (08:20.12)
I mean, that was actually pretty cool the way you said it. So I'm doing well, man. Thanks for having me.

Paul Povolni (08:24.277)
I'm excited for this conversation. Looking forward to seeing where we go. You're living in Austria, you're being bad in Austria, born in Philly, recovering law student. That's all amazing. And obviously a musician because we have both drums and guitar. Which one of those you actually play the most?

Andy Starr (08:43.222)
I actually play the rocket ship behind me right here. Like every day I play it way too much.

Paul Povolni (08:47.162)
Ha ha.

Yeah, nice. I'm sure your neighbors appreciate that too.

Andy Starr (08:52.876)
Man, that's God bless technology because these things get more and more silent. It's an electronic hit. yeah, like there are certain parts of the world where like I just wouldn't be able to get away with it. you know, God bless not just technology, but Austrian engineering, because the walls in this building are super, super thick. So yeah, I have like no reason to leave basically.

Paul Povolni (09:15.605)
Yeah, yeah. Well, they've probably been around for a long time and so they've built pretty strong.

Andy Starr (09:20.942)
They have, they'll survive the nuclear holocaust if it ever happens.

Paul Povolni (09:26.421)
Well, I appreciate you doing this. What I like to start with as we get into our conversation is I'd to hear a little bit about you, a little bit about your origin story, where you got started, how you recovered from being a law student and what you're doing now.

Andy Starr (09:43.906)
Yeah. So my, my origin story, since this conversation is going to be, you know, focused on brand and branding and the, the, that whole fun space, my origin story, I've gotten it much shorter than it used to be. and, but it's, it's, it's never, it's never uninteresting, at least to me. And I think Marty would say the same thing. so I grew up in Philly, like you said, I studied

Paul Povolni (09:58.601)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (10:13.214)
literature as an undergrad college student. And then I went to music school in Boston and then I worked in finance for the first half of my career. And then I took a really funky detour through law school. I'm not a lawyer, but yes, I am a recovering law student. And then somehow I got pulled into this whole branding, creative, weird space. And I've more or less been in that ever, ever since.

And the most recent thing I did was I started this little business teaching how to think in this space. And I started it with a guy named Marty Neumeier. And I know you know who he is because you interviewed him and a lot of folks probably listening know who he is. And I'm that one lucky bastard who had an idea, pitched the idea, and he was all about it.

Paul Povolni (10:49.588)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (10:56.724)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (11:10.766)
And here we are and it's been life changing. you know, that was kind of my weird funky trajectory. What we do next with what we're doing, we're still trying to figure it out.

Paul Povolni (11:10.889)
Yeah, here we are.

Paul Povolni (11:26.997)
So how does somebody that is creative, is a musician, you study literature and all of those things, how do you pivot from being such a right-side brainer to a left-side law and all of that stuff? Like how did that pivot happen?

Andy Starr (11:42.264)
Well, I don't think it was a pivot. I think it was like most things training my brain, the other side of my brain that maybe I wasn't using so much. you know, Marty and I have always talked from the very beginning of what we've been doing together. and he's certainly been talking about it longer than I have, or we have together. Like we've always talked about the left brain, right thing. And it's important to recognize

that, but at the same time, you can train yourself, right? And as far as what Marty and I have been doing together, the way we've designed what we do and how we do it is designed to train left brain people to use more of their right brain and right brain people to use more of their left brain. It's not something we really say out loud anymore. It's just,

For us, I think it's more of an inherent thing and we just do it. We don't talk about it, we just do it. So yeah, it wasn't a pivot. It was just an interesting learning experience, training myself to think in a different way.

Paul Povolni (12:55.539)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (13:00.181)
So with, you know, after you started pursuing branding, how did that step happen? You know, how did you go from what you were studying to getting into branding?

Andy Starr (13:09.406)
Yeah, that that's probably the, funkiest part. So the very short version is when I was in law school and I was, you know, up to my face in case books and briefs and all that stuff, I just, it wasn't doing it for me. And I was in a relationship with a girl at the time and she, she was a graphic designer. She came from like marketing and branding and all that stuff. And

funny enough, her father was actually not a competitor of Marty's, but like a contemporary. Like they kind of, they knew each other, you know, played in the same space. And so she knew who Marty was and she had a copy of Marty's first book, The Brand Gap. And, you know, I was more interested in the work that she was doing and kind of, I would rather talk to her about what I was doing, about what she was doing than about law school, right?

Paul Povolni (14:06.484)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (14:06.918)
And at some point, I made the decision to move on from law school. It wasn't cutting it for me. It wasn't interesting. And one night she put a copy of this little white and black book in my hand and it was interesting. And I started reading it. And next thing I knew, I'd been up all night. I'd read the whole thing overnight. And I've told this story before. I just started.

Paul Povolni (14:24.649)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (14:35.786)
thinking about things and seeing things differently. And that was interesting to me. And...

Paul Povolni (14:40.148)
Yeah.

Yeah. Dare I say it, was a head smack, right?

Andy Starr (14:46.722)
I mean, it, it, yeah, it, it, it wasn't just a, it was like a brain smack. it really was. And it was, it wasn't just my head and my brain. was like, it was my gut. You know, I was reading someone, I actually just wrote about this. I was reading someone who was very considerate and, very clearly put, you know, effort.

Paul Povolni (14:52.702)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (15:17.256)
thought into what he was saying, how he was saying it, why he was saying it, and who he was saying it for. This was a human being writing for other human beings in a space. The business world, especially these days, feels less and less human, even though more of us are kind of screaming for more humanity. It's become less and less human.

Paul Povolni (15:44.029)
Right, right.

Andy Starr (15:47.142)
and coming out of not just law school, but out of the first half of my career working in finance. And I wasn't just working as a trader or a broker. I wasn't facilitating capital. I was distributing capital. I was deploying it. And I was managing it. And I was seeing and dealing with how people really behave as human beings and then as business people and then as business leaders.

Paul Povolni (16:10.728)
Right.

Andy Starr (16:16.68)
And I had seen some really bad shit, like really, really ugly stuff. And all of a sudden, I'm reading this book written by someone who was on the other side of that. And his voice and his thinking, his ideas represented the other side. And that was interesting to me. It felt good to think about it for myself, right? And next thing I knew, I was just kind of trying to

Paul Povolni (16:31.102)
right.

Andy Starr (16:45.998)
carve out a little spot in this space, much later I was older than a lot of folks are when they get into this space. But I had a unique background. I had all of these different experiences and I had already been training my brain, like I said earlier, I had been training it to think in all of these different ways. And I wasn't overly reliant or dependent on one side versus the other. I knew

Paul Povolni (17:08.639)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (17:14.84)
how to use both, I knew how to dial one up when I needed to, and that gave me an advantage. And so next thing I knew, was freelancing, consulting, joining a team, and kind of doing the agency, lily pad to lily pad thing for a little bit, that got boring. And yeah, so that's kind of how that happened, but it's, know.

Paul Povolni (17:33.425)
Right.

Andy Starr (17:43.532)
I was lucky that someone recognized something enough in me and she put a copy of the brand cap.

Paul Povolni (17:51.517)
Yeah. Well, and what's interesting is that it kind of brought together those two sides of your experiences, right? The creative side and the logical side, and it was putting logic to branding and creativity for a lot of designers. That alone is something they don't think about. You know, they're very much about make it pretty, make it nice, make it good. You know, if I like it, it's successful in, you know, they'd miss kind of the whole.

You know, it does it serve a purpose does it do what it needs to do and all of that stuff, right?

Andy Starr (18:22.766)
It has a role for sure. That's not what allowed me to be successful. I'm not a designer. can barely, I've said this before, I can barely draw a stick figure without hurting myself. But I didn't need to do more than that, right? I could think, I could relate to a client, regardless of what category they may have been in. I could ask,

Paul Povolni (18:32.436)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (18:40.212)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (18:51.626)
smart questions and I'm sure we'll be talking about the value of asking questions, but asking questions isn't as valuable as being able to at least point, at least point your team and your client in the direction of an answer or a solution or an idea, right? A move, something. At the very least do that. That's more important than asking a question.

Paul Povolni (18:57.64)
Right.

Andy Starr (19:21.631)
I could do that fast, could do it compellingly, convincingly, and I just leaned into that. But I had no experience in campaigns. I had no experience. barely understood, even when I was starting, I barely understood enough what Marty's definition of a brand was or what branding really meant. But I did understand plenty to talk to a client in a way that

agency folks, the agency folks I was working with, could not or would not. That, and it's always been the same thing. That's just gonna be more valuable, what I was able to do than just what the agency had been able to do up until that point. Then, as I learned more and practiced using what I already knew, how I already knew how to think, and I started developing this new sense of being creative, right? Or being

Paul Povolni (19:57.653)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:20.082)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (20:21.154)
Provocative, no one can teach you how to be provocative. Being provocative is inherent to who you are. So I already brought that to the table. I just needed to learn and figure out for myself how to tap it, how to use it, when to use it, how to defend it, how to evolve it, and not be so static in what I brought to the table. But I got fun, and I was good at it.

Paul Povolni (20:28.084)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:43.187)
Right, right.

Andy Starr (20:50.69)
I've always been good at it. So, you know, by the time I actually met Marty and he and I started having this conversation, it was just so effortless. Like we never, I never felt like Marty and I were, you know, Mr. Neumeyer and Mr. Starr up until a point where we became Marty and Andy. Like we spoke the same language. We had different experiences, but like we could relate to them in the same way. We could relate to each other in the same way.

And it's like the most fun I've ever had in my career. So there we are.

Paul Povolni (21:25.277)
Yeah, do you still face those challenges in talking to agencies? they still getting it wrong?

Andy Starr (21:35.854)
Okay, so I'm not going to say at this, if you would ask me that question a year ago, I would have said, yeah, fuck yeah, they're getting it wrong. Don't ask me, like you don't have to hear that from me. I'm sure you hear that from so many other people as I do. I don't think now today, neither I nor Marty nor even Sabina now, and we'll talk about her I guess too, I don't think we would say they're doing it wrong.

They're just not doing it differently. And I think we would all agree that it's well past time to try things differently. Different model, different methods and processes, different value propositions, different packaging, different messaging, all that stuff, different skill sets. I would say that.

Paul Povolni (22:18.986)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (22:35.394)
Whether it's right or wrong, that's up to agencies and their owners to decide. It's up to their clients and their people to decide. But Marty and Sabina and I, we don't want to be on a self-righteous hill of right or wrong. We can make pretty strong arguments for things. We have our opinions, we have positions, but like,

We're not gonna be self-righteous. That's part of the problem in the space, not just with agencies, right? Because that is a problem. I think that agencies and their leaders who take those self-righteous positions, holier than thou, know, black and white, right and wrong, know, my way is the only way, our process is the only process. I won't say it's wrong. It just doesn't mean anything anymore.

Paul Povolni (23:11.604)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (23:31.874)
to agencies that are still in that mindset, still kind of approaching things that way, I'll be the one to say, good luck with that. Let me know how that works out in the next 12 or 18 months because it's not. So yeah, that's what I would say about agencies.

Paul Povolni (23:44.777)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:49.855)
So those that do want to listen to you, what do you start telling them? What do you start breaking down? What do you start being provocative about?

Andy Starr (23:57.358)
In terms of what?

Paul Povolni (23:59.429)
in branding brand strategy in serving their clients best.

Andy Starr (24:03.406)
shit, so you just want to get right to the spice. Okay. So I, they're trying to think of how I would start this.

Paul Povolni (24:06.493)
Let's do it.

Andy Starr (24:15.81)
The first thing I would say is I think it's important that everyone in this space be able, I think that the better and faster folks are able to recognize that one of the biggest problems that we're all facing, and it's not just agencies, it's business owners, it's team leaders.

It's even folks like Marty and Sabina and myself, people who are on the education side of it and the professional development, skills development part of the playground, recognizing what I just said a minute ago about how all of this stuff, even now, is so static. And that's a real problem. So for example, if you think about

Paul Povolni (25:04.148)
Mm-hmm.

Andy Starr (25:09.236)
all of the really popular recent trends or frameworks or exercises that we're all playing with, right? From archetypes to purpose and the whole purpose-driven branding thing and all of the other shit in between. They're all kind of based on the idea of

the brand or the business, whatever the exercise or the thing is being applied to. It's all based on the idea that the brand or the business is, it's being applied to the brand or the business in a very specific moment in time. It could have been last month, last year, last decade, okay? But as we all also know, things change. People change, mindsets change, behaviors.

and realities change, technologies obviously change, right? So flexibility and adaptability is probably, it's never been more important, but it's probably more important than most other things in this space these days, okay? That's probably where I would start that conversation. And then, you know, look, we can get into,

Paul Povolni (26:06.12)
Right.

Andy Starr (26:33.304)
Definitions, okay, this is an that's you know definitions are an example where you know When I said we don't want to be super self-righteous We don't you know Marty's definition of brand 25 years ago Still holds up. There's a reason why you know his books are on everyone's shelf if they're in their background and not exactly the other way around but

Paul Povolni (26:58.271)
All right, I've got it right there, yeah.

Andy Starr (27:02.83)
Forgetting that for a second, right? There's so much definition stacking at this point. Familiar language in kind of more familiar sounding feel good phrases. Everyone's talking about brand as identity or reputation or what? Perception. How it lives in the mind. There are a million variations on a million different

Paul Povolni (27:09.918)
Interesting.

Paul Povolni (27:24.948)
Right.

Andy Starr (27:32.546)
definitions, okay? We have our own. The thing is that everyone else, so many people these days seem to be so preoccupied just with definitions. Nothing more, right? Not really going beyond the definition. And most of those definitions, they're not really novel or original, right? So everything is kind of still stuck in the past on that one original definition, right? And that's okay.

Paul Povolni (27:59.805)
Right.

Andy Starr (28:02.272)
everyone else is just defining it, we talk about how to actually use it. Okay. And

Andy Starr (28:12.514)
There is value in more practitioners at least, roughly speaking the same language, working off of the same definitions or kind of foundational understandings. There's value to that. The more that gets pulled apart for the wrong reasons, right, just so that someone can claim, well, I took this thing that someone else said and I'm gonna white label it, repackage it, regurgitate it and make it my own.

Paul Povolni (28:27.742)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (28:40.352)
If they get it wrong, if they don't understand the there there of it, and I'll give you an example. That hurts everyone. It hurts other experts, it hurts other practitioners because when it's used with real clients and clients have a bad experience with someone who.

Paul Povolni (28:52.765)
Hmm.

Andy Starr (29:07.586)
doesn't get it, they may be really good at packaging themselves or selling themselves through to get a gig. But if that's the best that they can do, they ruin the opportunity for a better practitioner, another practitioner to work with that business in the future. So that's a real problem.

Paul Povolni (29:25.589)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (29:32.169)
You said you had an example.

Andy Starr (29:34.4)
Right, I just remembered I said that. I'm trying to remember exactly in what context. An example of, I'll come back to it. If it comes back to me, I know I'll hit it. I remember what it was. So we were talking about definitions for a minute. Everyone loves to work from Marty's definition of brand, Marty's definition of brand. It's a person's gut feeling about a company service or.

Paul Povolni (29:44.179)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (30:04.152)
Product, right? Everyone loves to regurgitate that.

A lot of people I was like this in the beginning a lot of people think that the power is in the definition It is not the power of that definition as an example is in why It's a person's gut feeling why Marty framed it that way and that's that is what I Would dare say not a hundred percent but like 99 % of people I hear and see

Paul Povolni (30:18.645)
Hmm, interesting.

Paul Povolni (30:32.085)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (30:41.718)
use the definition the way they do, they never talk about that. They never, they don't get it, right? They just kind of keep it surface level and hope that it does all the work. That isn't good enough. And it really doesn't do anyone any favors because if all you say is, know, Brandon is a person of gut feeling, what are people supposed to do with that? What is the client supposed to do with that? I learned that lesson the hard way.

Paul Povolni (31:06.365)
Right, right, right.

Andy Starr (31:09.654)
right at the very beginning. And then when I learned and I figured it out for myself before I met Marty.

when I figured out the why of it, that's when things changed, right? That's what people don't get. So as an example, we see this more and more and more, and we don't care that people are using his definition. What we care about is they're not using it the right way.

Paul Povolni (31:23.391)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (31:39.068)
Right, right.

Andy Starr (31:40.524)
So that's how I would start the conversation. Now you also mentioned what about strategy. That's probably like the messiest part of our space at this point. So you've talked to a lot of strategists on your podcast, right? I I know some of them. Some of them have been students in our master classes. You tell me what,

Paul Povolni (31:50.492)
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (31:56.168)
Right. Right.

Andy Starr (32:09.878)
What do you think the challenge with strategy is these days? Or is there a challenge? Maybe there's nothing wrong with it.

Paul Povolni (32:19.509)
I hadn't thought about it as what is the challenge with strategy. I think the challenge with strategy sometimes is people don't fully understand the why a strategy. Why do I need to start with strategy? If I make it pretty, if I make it nice, if I attach to a trend, if I whatever, that more work will get me more work. And they don't think that sometimes starting from strategy,

You're actually saving time and effort and marketing dollars by starting in the right place. And so I think for a lot of people in their urgency to get to market, to launch a product, to launch a brand, they, they think that it's just about the visuals. think it's just about putting stuff out there and, know, trying to be first, trying to be prettiest, trying to be whatever. And they don't think that there's value in actually stepping back.

and doing some strategy that lets them launch in a more solid and a more sustainable way. so, I think that's kind of the challenge that happens sometimes is a lot of people, and I think that some of them are starting to change that because they're realizing that they're putting in a lot of effort, getting nowhere, and then they have to step back and say, okay, what did we do wrong?

Andy Starr (33:40.899)
So I feel that I especially feel it because I've heard similar things. We've heard similar things over the last several years. But I don't really agree. And I'm pretty comfortable, pretty confident speaking, saying that Marty wouldn't agree with that. know Sabina doesn't agree with that. We don't agree because

you know, strategy, strategy requires something that designers who are, who are learning and studying and trying to, to, you know, evolve what it means to be a designer these days. They don't hear this, that strategy with

out that creative disruptive, I'll use the word because we use it all the time, without that other side of your brain or your ability to think, then it's not strategy. It's actually a wasted exercise. And there's a reason why in the program of master classes that Marty and I have created, there's a reason why we've never started.

our program, right, with strategy. Our program may be linear and we understand that a lot of practitioners out in the space, whether they're on the strategic side or the creative side, we understand the tendency is to follow a linear process, right? You do your discovery, you do your strategy, you do your ideation, you do creative and then you do execution. Totally get it, I did that for several years.

We would argue that, and we can show, first, there are other ways to do it. We can make an argument for how some of those other ways are better. And one of the ways we tend towards, and one of the ways that we teach is not linear, where strategy doesn't happen first or second or in a specific order. It happens at the same time as

Andy Starr (36:01.838)
Everything else right so it gets super super messy. That's a separate conversation but you know I said that we never we've never start we've never started teaching folks With strategy because if you can't think creatively or disruptively or outside the box, right if you actually can't think Unstrategically then you actually really can't think strategically as far as

the way we understand strategy, the way we teach, the way we define strategy. So I would always agree, look, if a strategic exercise can make things easier or faster, if it can make you more marketable, if it lets you command a higher fee, if it lets you figure out how to reduce revisions on a project, awesome, go for it, okay?

But I think one of those other big problems is I think it's very, very, very similar to that idea of things being so static, right? If you just keep doing it the same way all the time, right? If you feel like you have to do it that one way.

that's just not relevant as a practitioner. And it's not really relevant to a business, especially in 2026. And so we've seen not just a kind of a static mindset in this space, but we've seen a very procedural, if that makes sense, a very procedural approach to how to think about something like strategy, how to do it, how to practice it.

Paul Povolni (37:51.412)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (37:55.712)
it's not where we're coming from. So I know a lot of strategists and a lot of self-professed strategy gurus, they talk about how important the idea of clarity is and being clear. And you wanna be as clear as you possibly can be before you do the next thing. Makes total sense. I would love to be as clear as humanly possible before I take a next step, but that's just not how things.

really are. That's not realistic. And so many of them stop at clarity. You got to be clear.

we go to consequence because one way or another, if you are a designer who's trying to be more strategic and you're selling strategic services, especially to a client who only knows you as a designer, but even if you are a known strategist.

they especially know at some point you can't get more clear, you can't ask more questions, you won't get another answer, right? And you still have to do something. You still have to be able to think without. You have to be able to think around. And you have to be able, like I said before, you have to be able to at least point to a move, okay? And following those

Paul Povolni (39:09.14)
Right.

Paul Povolni (39:22.206)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (39:27.598)
rigid and static definitions and a rigid process or a formula, and especially one that falls within an even more rigid overarching linear process, that's what has come to templatize the discipline. The more templated it is, the less valuable it is. And actually the more difficult it becomes to sell.

Paul Povolni (39:48.957)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (39:58.902)
Certainly the more difficult it is to charge a higher fee, right? So to us, strategy, it's not a workshop, it's not a template, it's not a checklist. It's more of a bet, it's a gamble, right? Because we respect that it will always be uncertain, but there will always be consequences. That's what we focus on, okay? So I would say that part of the approach, that is sorely missing.

Paul Povolni (39:59.231)
So.

Paul Povolni (40:02.527)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (40:29.656)
this space. And that's why we're still trying to do what we do.

Paul Povolni (40:34.175)
So talk about that a little more, know, with, if you're not starting from strategy, talk about, you know, what you think would be the better way to approach a client that is needing to launch a brand or to maybe even relaunch a brand they launched wrong. What would you start talking about?

Andy Starr (40:58.062)
We wouldn't talk that much. We would just start getting shit done. know, like Marty, and I've done this with Marty before, Marty and I...

were, Marty and I did a project once very early on, it was really, really cool. And we were in the room and you could call what we were doing in the moment, you could call that discovery. We weren't doing strategy or nothing.

But in the conversation with the client that we were having, we were asking questions, sure, and we were getting answers, but then we were just kind of reacting in the moment. Well, what if we did this? What if things looked like this? What if blah? What if that? Why not blah? Why not this? OK. And while we were doing that, all of a sudden, Marty takes out his pen and a piece of paper and he literally starts sketching what

An idea that's been thrown out. Maybe I threw the idea out. Maybe the client threw out a different idea in reaction to something he heard from us. All of a sudden, Marty starts sketching out, well, here's what that might look like. Rough, unpolished. It's not up on a you know, 1080p slide in a massive presentation deck. It's literally, literally a designer's sketch, a visualization of an idea on a piece of paper.

Paul Povolni (42:16.958)
You

Andy Starr (42:26.958)
So right there, we're doing discovery, we're doing strategy, we're doing ideation, and we're doing creative exploration, all in the same breath, in the same sentence, in the same second. And we got to something much faster, and even I would say like more interesting, faster than we probably would have.

Paul Povolni (42:52.212)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (42:55.406)
if we had taken our time, if we had overthought it. Okay? That's the thing.

Is that for everyone? No.

Okay? It's very messy. Okay? It's no more certain than any other process. Okay?

Paul Povolni (43:12.371)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Starr (43:22.872)
But it is fast and,

Paul Povolni (43:26.133)
Yeah, yeah. And it's revelatory, I'm sure.

Andy Starr (43:31.018)
It's it's it can be for sure that also depends on who you are and and and if you have a team with you Especially if they're following your lead how open-minded are you? Right? How can you help them understand? that specific process the value of that process right you need to be able to learn you need to be able to understand that because if you have a client if your clients not getting it if if

You know, they start throwing up defenses. You know, you have to be able to evaluate, all right, well, do you, you know, die on your sword? you try to like help them break through or do you shift if you know how, right? Can you shift from one overarching method or process to another in the same session? But all that and you're doing it if you're doing it with them.

Paul Povolni (44:15.37)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (44:30.124)
Not for them, right? And that's nothing new. I'm sure you've heard that before. But doing it with them, there is a difference between doing it with them and doing it for them. Now, we've heard this from a lot of practitioners. Well, what happens when you get a client who just, they're not open-minded, they're not creative, they don't like risk, no one likes risk. So that's nothing new. You're talking about everyone.

Paul Povolni (44:33.801)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (44:39.081)
Right.

Paul Povolni (44:52.168)
Right, right, yeah.

Andy Starr (44:56.75)
It's really hard to to come up with ideas with them in the moment. They're just going to shoot everything down Well, there are ways to deal with that That have nothing to do with strategy or purpose or all of the other buzzy things That's a collaboration issue Do you know how to collaborate? Can you teach your client how to collaborate right and then use that? With all of these other methods or processes, right? You get it. It's like a burger. You just keep

stacking and adding treats and toppings, right? It's super complicated. That's the other thing about this space. So many people have tried to reduce this discipline, right? Down to, you know, a single patty, no cheese, one bite slider, right? They have. Everyone has tried to reduce it down. And that's just...

Paul Povolni (45:29.939)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (45:46.581)
Right. Right. Yeah.

Andy Starr (45:55.905)
beyond dumb. It just doesn't work that way.

Paul Povolni (45:57.383)
Yeah. Well, and because I think it's because it's for them, it's easier to sell. It's easier to talk to a client that is ignorant of the process. And so. Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Starr (46:06.286)
totally get it, totally get it. But it's not true and it's not valuable, it's not realistic. That's the thing. So if you think about what any of us are really promising or selling, doing this kind of work, we're selling not even just an outcome, we sell a reality.

Paul Povolni (46:16.339)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (46:35.79)
We sell a reality, that's what a client pays for. And so if your work, if your project or collaboration with that client starts from a foundation that isn't grounded in reality,

Paul Povolni (46:36.213)
OK, talk about that.

Andy Starr (46:56.064)
I don't know, there are different labels for that. But that's not where we come from. It's not what we teach, it's not what we support. So this is a really complicated business art. That's how we think of it. It's an art form. And it demands practice and time and all that shit. But no one person, Marty can't do this on his own.

Paul Povolni (47:14.495)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (47:25.998)
And I'll be the first to tell you, like, there's so many things he can't do, or he doesn't want to do, or he can do and he's just not very good at. So, you know, one of that's, it's been one of the most frustrating things for us over the last several years. Like the space has become so saturated with all of this noise that implies that any one person can do all of this. If they simply take my course, my workshop, download my template, it's all.

Paul Povolni (47:32.628)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (47:55.374)
Bullshit it's all bullshit and and So so last year at some point last year Marty and I gave a talk and we really called this out we were kind of brutal about it and Maybe it had an effect we've noticed some some folks who were who never talked about collaboration before now all of a sudden They're talking about collaboration. They're talking about doing this stuff together. You know, they're even like trademarking together, which is weird, but

Paul Povolni (48:22.453)
Hahaha.

Andy Starr (48:23.871)
Even that like we won't complain about as long as people buy into The reality that like you have to be able to do to do this with other people when you can then Then an even better case scenario

people you're collaborating with, they bring their own unique, interesting, because the work shouldn't just be interesting, the methods, the processes that you follow, that you use should also be interesting. The more interesting they are, the more interesting the people involved are, the more interesting the work is going to be. Right, every day of the week, twice on Sunday.

Paul Povolni (48:51.091)
Right.

Paul Povolni (49:00.722)
Right, right.

Andy Starr (49:06.402)
That, yeah, as you can see, for us, we get really hyped up on this. It's a lot to talk about, it's a lot to, and it's worth arguing for, it's worth fighting for.

Paul Povolni (49:21.897)
Yeah. Well, and there's a lot that you have said that, that, questions just kept popping up in my head of things to threads to pull on. but I want to circle back to, know, you would ask me about strategy and, I shared what I, I, people have said, then you kind of push back and you said, well, that's, that's incorrect. It's about collaboration. in my mind, collaboration is a type of strategy. So when, when I said strategy, what, what in your mind,

Andy Starr (49:47.224)
Yeah, sure.

Paul Povolni (49:50.719)
How did you segment that into saying that was incorrect to use that term? And then you talked about a strategy, which is collaboration. How do you define or how do you separate those?

Andy Starr (50:02.69)
I don't separate them. What I said was one of the problems or issues that we found in that kind of subspace, right, focused on strategy, is the idea that just doesn't seem to die, the idea that

you can do this work 100 % on your own. It's a very surface level way of thinking about the strategy discipline. And I said, I agree with you, I get it. For a lot of people, the people who,

Paul Povolni (50:37.719)
yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (50:52.596)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (51:02.414)
and the people who sell it, it's a sexy proposition, right? Makes things easier, makes things faster, makes things more valuable. I get it. For us, so let's take a step back because that's kind of how you frame that question. First of all, what do we mean by strategy? Well, for us, strategy is very, very simple.

all about advantage, right? Designing or creating an advantage. And we talk about in our strategy class, we talk about why that word, like why do we define it that way? It's not really an original definition. It's a historical definition, okay? We've just packaged and framed it as simply as we possibly can because it gets.

Paul Povolni (51:39.999)
That's good, yeah.

Andy Starr (51:59.914)
unnecessarily complicated more often than not, right? So we talk about it's all about creating advantage. And that means it's all about creating the future. That's what design is, okay? Designers have always been the first to tell us, and Marty was the first to tell me, like, you need to work with other people, balance ideas, critique the work that's made.

Paul Povolni (52:02.281)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (52:10.549)
I like that, yeah.

Andy Starr (52:29.454)
That's how the work gets better. That's how the practitioner themselves get better. Strategy is actually the same thing as design. We talk about it really the same way. They're defined almost exactly the same way. The practice, the implications, the consequences are almost exactly the same. As a discipline, you know,

Paul Povolni (52:53.205)
Hmm, interesting, yeah.

Andy Starr (52:57.002)
most people still think of them as two completely separate disciplines. They are not.

Paul Povolni (53:02.323)
Interesting.

Andy Starr (53:03.16)
They are exactly the same thing. The output may be uniquely different, but in terms of doing the work, not really. They're really the same. So that's what that was. And by the way, I totally agree with you. Sometimes, especially if there is no collaboration or if the conditions for collaboration aren't optimal or non-existent, like collaboration.

can be a strategy. But again, I would say that that's true on a surface level.

Paul Povolni (53:42.867)
Okay, go under the surface.

Andy Starr (53:43.779)
Here's another example. So let's go onto the surface. So here's another example that we like to use.

Andy Starr (53:53.986)
One of the still hot trendy strategies that so many businesses take nowadays, what do you think it is?

Paul Povolni (54:06.035)
I have no idea. yeah.

Andy Starr (54:06.872)
Sustainability.

Andy Starr (54:11.296)
It may be in their minds a strategy, but we can pick apart in two seconds why it's not. Why it shouldn't be. It can be an initiative, it can be an effort, it can be a goal, a mission, sure. But a strategy is a slightly different thing. It's actually not a slightly different thing, it's a very different thing. And we can pick apart very quickly why. We've done it, we've done it with clients over the years, right? And for the same reason

that sustainability isn't a worthy strategy, neither really is collaboration. They're both kind of like, they should be baseline, like, built-in standard. They should come standard with the car. Just like a steering wheel should come standard with a car, right? It's the same with collaboration. It's the same with sustainability.

Paul Povolni (54:54.685)
Hmm. Yeah.

Right

Andy Starr (55:05.112)
Same thing. you know, that's how we think of things like

Paul Povolni (55:12.799)
So you'd also talked about clarity and how, you know, clarity, clarity, everybody wants to talk clarity. Talk a little bit about that. Why, why do you push back on that?

Andy Starr (55:18.478)
you

Andy Starr (55:22.99)
It's not that I push back on clarity, it's that.

We push beyond clarity. Most people that we hear talking about or selling strategy or teaching strategy, they stop at clarity. We don't. It's nice to have. Look at the world right now. We've been talking about this a lot over the last year. You think the world is very clear? It's not. Look at how messy it is, right?

And clarity, at this point, we would talk about clarity as a nice to have, but a not needed. And not even not needed. We just say, you can't expect it. You can't. Now, any little bit or more than a little bit of clarity that you may be able to get, that's awesome. Run with it, for sure. But that's not mission accomplished, okay?

Paul Povolni (56:11.818)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (56:27.138)
there are consequences to strategy. There is the ability to anticipate consequences, reactions, micro strategies, ideas for creating or maintaining, holding, defending, whatever advantage you're trying to accomplish, right? So look, you know,

Clarity is helpful. It's valuable, but it's just not enough because like I said before you just have to be able to make a move One way or another and if you're a business owner look business owner, you know the whole the whole Cliche About no one knows a business better than the client. No one knows level sees business better than Marty or Sabina or I do So if anyone's gonna have clarity before anyone else it's going to be us

We can't wait for clarity. And you can be super clear and still be, I don't know, irrelevant. Everyone in brand is always talking about relevance and value and meaning and then trust. You can have clarity and still be irrelevant. You can have clarity. You can be super clear and still be.

not just irrelevant, like unremarkable. You can be clear and mediocre. You can be clear and still be very, you can still, you can be clear and still be economically weak.

Paul Povolni (57:57.287)
Hmm interesting. Yeah

Paul Povolni (58:02.216)
Right.

Andy Starr (58:11.438)
Okay? So that, that's like the start of a conversation about why clarity just isn't enough. It's, we get it, can't say it enough, we get it, but like clarity has been like the mic drop, that's like level one thinking. We're way beyond level one.

Paul Povolni (58:33.245)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (58:37.959)
Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's just a milestone along the way. It's not the destination, right? It's just one of the things that are important to have, but not the end goal. Yeah. So one of the, one of the things that you had mentioned is, you know, when talking to, folks talking to, trying to get them to work on getting clear on some things, getting some strategy in place, you'd mentioned questions are important.

Andy Starr (58:48.846)
for sure, 100%.

Paul Povolni (59:05.53)
What are some of the questions that are important to answer that can help them along the way?

Andy Starr (59:15.14)
I mean, the first, in a best case scenario, it's, what's the problem? Like, what are you trying to solve? Right, so even before you ask what advantage do you want or what do you want your future to look like, it's all the same thing. That's the goal of strategy. It's why aren't you there yet? What's in the way? Right, so problem, problem.

Paul Povolni (59:34.218)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (59:38.963)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (59:41.078)
Identifying the problem, that's a good start. What do you want that future to look like if you solve that problem? Or what does advantage look like to you? And being ruthless, both as a practitioner for a client, but also for yourself, right? Doing it for yourself, being ruthless, holding yourself or a client.

accountable for articulating what they want.

And you can balance what's wanted with what's needed. And sometimes they're the same thing, sometimes they're not. But being clear about that, asking what will it take to get there? What do we have that we don't need? What do we need that we don't have? Where do we get it? How do we get it? Do we make it for ourselves? Can we do that? And what do we want to happen?

Paul Povolni (01:00:27.431)
Right. Right.

Andy Starr (01:00:51.616)
if we can do all that, okay? So, you know, and there are variations and there are question trees that you can build out. We like to keep things as humanly simple as possible from start to finish because everything else is gonna be ultra complicated, right? So, you know, if people have a list of 30 questions, great, okay.

Paul Povolni (01:00:53.513)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:01:07.615)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:01:20.238)
We have a few more, right? So even before we do that, we'll start with the questions that Marty put in the brain gap. Who are you, what do you do, and why does it matter? Why should I care? Why should anyone care? More often than not, those questions are more difficult to answer. That third question, why does it matter? Why should anyone care about who you are and what you do and what you're offering? That question more often than not is harder.

Paul Povolni (01:01:34.291)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (01:01:49.39)
for a client or a team to answer than those other questions. Okay? But like I said,

Paul Povolni (01:01:53.427)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:02:01.26)
The questions are important. The language that you use to frame them are important, but the questions aren't as important as the answers you're gonna have to come up with one way or another.

Paul Povolni (01:02:13.961)
Yeah, yeah. And sometimes.

Andy Starr (01:02:15.982)
I hate to dismiss the idea of questions, right? Because I don't. I very rarely, and Marty very rarely, would just start something with a client by saying, here's what you need to do. But the truth is, Paul, and I know any of your listeners, anyone listening to this, some of them are gonna have a problem with what I'm about to say, sometimes,

Paul Povolni (01:02:34.463)
Right.

Andy Starr (01:02:47.156)
It's okay to just skip the questions, right? Skip all the bullshit and get down to it, right? If you have the expertise, if you have the taste, the aesthetic judgment, the intellectual judgment, to make that call, if you can see what's up, if you can evaluate,

and you can form a judgment and that judgment allows you to get to, here's an idea to deal with that.

and say it. Don't waste time, don't waste your client's money. Although the irony is, if you can do that, if you can develop a skill for doing that, that's actually, that should be, we would argue. And I know others like, you know, we knew we did something with Christo early on in Level C's, you know, life cycle. And we know he's always talked about how to price and how to argue, you know, for a fee.

Paul Povolni (01:03:29.32)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (01:03:57.154)
I think even he would get down with the idea is if you could do what I just described and talked about being able to do, that's worth even more than the standard kind of approach, project, retainer, fee, whatever. It's worth more. So why not? But you have to be able to defend it. That's the thing.

Paul Povolni (01:04:11.429)
Right, right, right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:04:21.162)
You have to be able to explain the why and the how. If you can, do it. Go with it. If it's logical, if it's rational, if it stands on its own, especially if it doesn't need your defense, why not? But this is another thing that we see. So many practitioners, they don't spend enough time learning how to develop and articulate and package and deliver.

how and why.

Paul Povolni (01:04:52.937)
Right, right.

Andy Starr (01:04:54.082)
They just don't. That's the whole critical thinking and analysis thing that the World Economic Forum made a big splash about that for folks last year. They said that's gonna be the top skill to develop in the years to come. It was never not the top skill.

Paul Povolni (01:04:56.478)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:05:13.141)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (01:05:14.966)
So now we're getting messy. Now we're going in all sorts of directions. So you need to keep me honest.

Paul Povolni (01:05:21.417)
Well, and, and I do want to, and we're already at an hour. can't believe how quickly this conversation has gone. This has been amazing. and so, so much value, so much good stuff to talk about and, know, branding and brand strategy and, you know, it's been a conversation there. Everybody became a brand strategist for a while there. you know, it seemed that everybody that used to be a marketer used to be a, a designer used to do whatever suddenly they were brand strategists.

Andy Starr (01:05:39.287)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:05:48.371)
That kind of died down and now, you know, they're AI specialists and they're, you know, they went to NFTs and AI and all of that, you know, they, kind of morphed into these things, but what's happening that I've seen that is kind of a little concerning. And I think it goes along with what you had shared about the collaboration, discussion, discovery, the, asking questions and drilling down and, taken, you know, branches off questions is people are creating brand strategy AIs.

Andy Starr (01:05:56.209)
Yep.

Andy Starr (01:06:07.118)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:06:17.829)
And so how do you, how do you talk about that in your community? How do you talk about that with those that you serve when they say, man, what should I do now? Cause you know, AI can build a brand strategy. How do you, what do you tell them?

Andy Starr (01:06:17.912)
Yep.

Andy Starr (01:06:37.223)
I don't think it can. think, I think, so, okay, that's a whole other conversation. The first thing I want to say is when we talk about AI now, we're not the guys who are saying, or the guys in Sabina, we are not the ones saying, you know,

AI is a tool, the humans have to learn how to use the tool. We're not even gonna say that. I would say it's a little bit more than that, okay? So I just wanna be really clear for your audience. The second thing I would say is AI is not the problem, people are the problem. The decisions, like I said before, the ability to evaluate, use judgment, use...

a new tool or technology tastefully, that's the issue. The people using it are the issue. For the ones, now, for the ones when they say or they ask, know, should I use it, how do I use it, we don't teach anyone how to use AI, even for brand or strategy or brand strategy or any of this work. You know, AI, we talk about,

just to make sure everyone's clear. It's an average, right? I think everyone gets that at this point.

At, it's almost most, it's an average. At its absolute best, I think it can be a great thinking tool. Right, like so when people ask how we use it, Marty doesn't really use it, like at all. I use it to help myself organize my thoughts, right? know, raging ADHD. I need extra help just organizing all of my ideas.

Paul Povolni (01:08:33.958)
Hahaha.

Andy Starr (01:08:38.956)
but I don't ask it for ideas, okay? I'll use it to spar with at the very most, but I'd rather spar with people, okay? Same thing with strategy. So the way I use it is what I would use any other tool for in the strategy process. If you wanna use,

Paul Povolni (01:08:51.571)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (01:09:06.008)
tool that's built to averages for, if you want to use a tool that's built for averages to try and create advantage, I don't know. Average and advantage don't really go together, okay? And if you're gonna, if you really believe,

Paul Povolni (01:09:23.477)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, right.

Andy Starr (01:09:34.252)
that and you put all of your faith in something like that, I'm pretty sure like I would bet everything I have that you're gonna be disappointed. You're gonna have a crisis of conscience or faith sooner probably rather than later. And look, when you look at everything that's happening around us, that's why it's so important for practitioners in the space.

to pay attention, to be aware, and to understand what's happening, not just within the space. And when you do that, when you pay attention, there is a much louder and a much more urgent cry and want for.

Paul Povolni (01:10:07.337)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:10:24.418)
the things that AI will never be able to give us, even for free, okay? So we've been called crazy in the last year for like not talking about AI or not like offering a new master class that's AI focused. We've been called crazy. We've been called naive and out of touch. Okay.

Paul Povolni (01:10:30.922)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:10:50.07)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (01:10:54.102)
Except we're not. And like we know we're not. And we're gonna be the ones doubling down on the thing at some point, one way or another, it's going to be the thing again. And you know, it's funny. Just to kind of bring this in for landing. This idea of brand, being different, standing out, surprising people, provoking people, all kind of, they all share the same

the same DNA,

Andy Starr (01:11:29.674)
All that stuff will always matter, right? Being able to make people feel surprised. Give them that gut feeling like I'm seeing something new, I'm feeling something new, I'm hearing something new, I'm tasting something new, I'm experiencing something new, right?

Paul Povolni (01:11:33.587)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:11:38.099)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:11:48.544)
Surprise doesn't come, it's not a function of intelligence.

Paul Povolni (01:11:57.275)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (01:11:58.582)
Right? AI intelligence, cool. Surprise, provocation, feeling has nothing to do with intelligence, artificial or not, right? So, you know.

Paul Povolni (01:12:09.311)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:12:16.682)
you're more likely to be surprised or to cause people, to help people feel surprised, to do the kind of work that surprises people, that is remembered because of how surprising and different and funky it was. You're more likely to do that when the way you do it is not linear, it's not safe, it's not predictable, it's not comfortable, right?

Paul Povolni (01:12:31.667)
Right, right, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:12:43.721)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and if people are using AI for brand strategy and everybody starts doing that, everybody's going to end up on the same level on the same plane. You know, it's kind of like almost going back to our original discussion is you talked about people use Marty's book. They, they latch onto his definition of brand and, they don't have a whole lot more than that. They don't have the, you had talked about.

Andy Starr (01:12:58.262)
They already have.

Paul Povolni (01:13:12.073)
You had talked about the instinct of being able to drill down and collaborate and Marty doodling and saying, here's where my instinct, here's where my intuition is kind of taking me. You miss all that with AI. You don't get any of that experimenting, that discovery that I made a mistake, but wait a second. Hmm. There's something in that mistake. You don't get that with AI.

Andy Starr (01:13:34.732)
You don't get that with AI. also don't get, AI will not teach you. It can't help you make better judgments. It definitely can't help you develop sense of taste, right? Like taste and judgment have become like the new like thing that everyone's been talking about over the last year. I mean.

Paul Povolni (01:13:49.202)
Right.

Andy Starr (01:13:56.618)
You can't teach that, okay, and you can't prompt it. But when I said before, none of this stuff comes so much from intelligence. Emotional intelligence, sure. Like, I can make that argument for sure. But like, even without that, right?

Paul Povolni (01:13:58.847)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (01:14:22.478)
it's going to happen one way or another. has nothing to do, or AI can't have anything to do with that, right? AI...

by its nature and us by ours.

Andy Starr (01:14:42.018)
they can't have anything to do with each other at a certain point. My gut feeling, your gut feeling, there's no prompting. There's no output.

If that were being taught more, if that were being developed more and valued more, I think our discipline, I think the broader landscape and then the world around it would be radically different and probably for the better. It's just not easy. But shit, we always say the same thing. I always say the same thing to people.

Paul Povolni (01:15:18.963)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:15:28.172)
the more uncomfortable the process or the experience is, the harder it is, the better the ideas are gonna be. And the easier it is for people to learn or figure out for themselves how to get comfortable, how to like, or at least just how to be able to function within that.

Paul Povolni (01:15:39.028)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:15:54.515)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:15:55.896)
They're the ones who do the work that the rest of us aspire to. They're the ones doing the work that we all use as our case studies. And there's a reason why, someone asked us the other day, because we talked so much about liquid death over the last several years, what brand now, what brand has stepped up to kind of take the spotlight? None that we can talk about. They're kind of like the last one that we can think of.

Paul Povolni (01:16:07.358)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:16:26.306)
that actually did something awesome, that actually embodies what we teach, what we've all practiced, what you and your audience are still trying to chase and develop.

and we know it's no secret how they did it. Everything I've been talking about and everything that Marty and I teach, the way we teach it, it's the exact same thing. It's not a secret, it's not like voodoo or witchcraft, right? It's...

Paul Povolni (01:16:46.718)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:16:55.646)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (01:17:08.6)
but there's no AI platform that will give that to you. There just isn't. And if there is, if there is, we are all screwed.

Paul Povolni (01:17:14.665)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:17:20.341)
Right, right. And I think that, yeah, like we had talked about, I think there's a, definitely a place in the future, even with AI, because AI is going to, you know, like you said, it's going to average, it's going to mimic, it's going to pretend it's going to be that I have the definition of branding, therefore I say these things, but it doesn't, it doesn't really understand it really well. And I think there's still going to be a place for people that have that intuition, that instinct, that gut feeling that

that roadmap of questions to ask to go a lot deeper than an AI would ever think of, that's based on experience.

Andy Starr (01:17:55.82)
You need it, you need it even if you use AI. Like I said, like the problem, the issue is not the technology. The issue is the person using it, the decisions that they make. How do they know how to think and evaluate and form judgments and have taste to make decisions with or without the tool? The tool.

Paul Povolni (01:17:59.935)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:18:09.141)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:18:19.882)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:18:24.534)
in a way, the tool doesn't mean anything. The tool may as well not exist. If we woke up tomorrow to some AI rapture, AI didn't exist anymore, what I just said will still be the case. And just consider this, this is something that Sabina, our new managing partner, Sabina, lot of people don't realize this, Sabina was one of our early students.

Paul Povolni (01:18:52.118)
well.

Andy Starr (01:18:54.446)
She's killer, killer. And she naturally like vibes with all of this, right? So we invited her to be our third managing partner. But Sabina said this recently, she was asked kind of the same question you asked me. And she said, know, right now, as we've talked about, you know, it comes down to the people using it, right? Really executives, business owners, founders, leaders making decisions.

Paul Povolni (01:18:55.795)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:19:22.752)
one way or another, good or bad, smart or stupid, about this particular thing.

Paul Povolni (01:19:26.42)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:19:31.288)
But she asked a room full of executives, like, what would happen, what would they do, what would they think if all of a sudden they, what if CEOs and CMOs and CBOs could be replaced by AI tomorrow? How would the discussion, how would the mindset change, right? And it's fucking true. So yeah, if you wanna put your eggs, if you wanna.

Paul Povolni (01:19:48.723)
Yeah, wow.

Andy Starr (01:19:59.906)
double down on AI, go ahead, we're not.

Paul Povolni (01:20:04.745)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think, I think, you know, everything that you've said is so important when it comes to, you know, building that intuition, instinct, the knowing the questions to ask and all of that. If you're going to be replacing the people that are entry level in, the arts, in creativity, in thinking, in any lawyers, whatever accountants, you're going to be replacing them with AI, then who's going to be developing

that instinct, that intuition, that experience, that knowing of things, if you have replaced the people that would work their way up to developing those skills, right?

Andy Starr (01:20:43.222)
Right, so that is definitely an implication that is worth talking about and worrying about for sure. At the same time, why should a business owner care? Is it a business owner's responsibility to provide and develop their human?

teams abilities to evaluate and form judgments and learn? No, right? Like objectively, you can take a step back and say like, why would they care? They probably wouldn't, but we care. And so this I think comes back, this actually brings this whole conversation back around to strategy actually. Because,

We all have to be willing and able to ask and then answer the question, what kind of future do we want? What kind of fucking future do we want? What role can we play in creating that future that we want? Because we said this in the fall, the future's gonna play out in one of three ways. It's either going to be an extension of the present, which means nothing's going to be new, everything's going to be at best the same.

Paul Povolni (01:21:42.132)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:22:04.8)
if not worse, and history has kind of shown that no one likes that. That's the first way. The second way it's gonna play out is someone's going to design it for you.

Paul Povolni (01:22:17.939)
Yeah, yeah.

Andy Starr (01:22:18.67)
None of us want anyone else to design the future for us. So the third option is we design it for ourselves. That's what everyone would like to have. So when it comes to even AI, even for your audience members who may be younger, design-focused practitioners, they have just as much a responsibility as Marty or I do in deciding what kind of

future we want if it's a future where AI takes the lead we all defer we all default right subjugate ourselves whatever Okay, but I don't think that's what anyone wants So then all of a sudden the the the choice and the decision set changes But I get it. It's that that's a very crude black and white Way of looking at it, but shit man

Paul Povolni (01:23:02.963)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:23:17.88)
There's enough gray in the world, so let's try something different. There we are.

Paul Povolni (01:23:24.733)
Yeah, and so you'd mentioned Sabina a couple times. Tell me about that new edition. Tell me how that is going and how that changes how you guys are doing things.

Andy Starr (01:23:27.896)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:23:33.766)
Yeah, so the loudest thing I can say is you should be talking to her next. For what it's worth, Marty has only ever, before me, I'm basically Marty's second business partner in his career. And it took the first year or two for me to kind of earn his trust.

Paul Povolni (01:23:39.893)
I would love to.

Andy Starr (01:24:02.178)
and faith beyond just being a business partner, okay? But that alone was difficult, okay? You can probably imagine how many people have wanted to be a business partner with him, to go into business with him. And so with Sabina, I said that she was one of our students. She didn't need any of our classes, but she's intellectually curious and really starving.

intellectually and she just, can't learn and think enough. And she just stood out and no one has been a bigger supporter of us than she's been. so, you know, Marty and I have always been a two man band and as a musician, like you can only make so much kind of music with two pieces, right? And for what we want to do and where we hopefully see ourselves going,

Paul Povolni (01:24:32.029)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:24:52.719)
Yeah. Right, right.

Andy Starr (01:25:01.998)
We need more awesome people. We need other musicians and instruments. So Sabina has a background in marketing. She was a C-suite for most of her career. She worked with a global company for basically her entire career, almost 20 years. And she's just better than almost anyone else in our space. She should be leading us.

And basically at this point she's become the next level voice of reason for us. So Marty and I, we have our way of kind of working together and batting ideas around. Sabina is like this new like...

Paul Povolni (01:25:30.495)
Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:25:49.944)
voice of sanity, reason, and also she's a voice of insanity because she'll be the first person to say to Marty and me, like you guys aren't being crazy enough. You aren't thinking big enough, broadly enough, deeply enough, crazy enough. So everyone needs that. Everyone, yeah, and that's, I think that's a great sign off for this because for your audience listening.

Paul Povolni (01:26:08.755)
That's good to have somebody like that around. Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:26:19.384)
Whatever your role is, design, strategy, project management, anything in between, right? Your client.

What they really want, especially if they're a founder, if they're business owner, what they really want is that. They want the conciliary, they want the sparring partner. They don't need more echo chamber echoes. They don't, whether it's yes or absolutely or whatever, they don't need that. They don't want that.

Paul Povolni (01:26:43.475)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:26:49.928)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:26:57.577)
Yeah, right.

Andy Starr (01:26:59.214)
And neither did we. So that's who Sabina is, but you should talk to her because she's like, she's stupid smart. Stupid smart.

Paul Povolni (01:27:04.972)
absolutely.

That's amazing. Well, Andy, can't believe how long we have chatted and it feels like we've only touched the surface and I appreciate your time and doing this. So if people want to find out more about you, more about what Level C is doing, what's the best way to get a hold of you?

Andy Starr (01:27:24.526)
levelc.org, that's our website, or we are now hanging out a lot more on sub stack, so that's levelc.substack.com, and for what it's worth to them, if you go to our sub stack, you can join for free, okay? And for now, for the time being, because of how things are in the world and in our space and with this discipline, we're hosting basically bi-weekly, like every other week, and we're trying to do more.

we're hosting critique sessions and it's like equal parts professional therapy and brainstorming and it's basically like, look, the whole point of a critique is to explore the thinking and the meaning behind ideas or the work that we do. so dozens of people come together every time and we just bat shit around. No agenda, no goals, like the point.

Paul Povolni (01:27:56.322)
well.

Paul Povolni (01:28:18.715)
Awesome. Wow. Wow.

Andy Starr (01:28:22.538)
is just to have a very open, honest, and as rich as humanly possible discussion about what we're doing, what we're seeing, what we're thinking, and yeah, how we feel about it. So if that sounds interesting to people, that's our Substack. Substack is free, and our critique sessions for now are free. All you have to do is sign up.

Paul Povolni (01:28:38.569)
Yeah, love that. That is so cool. Yeah.

Andy Starr (01:28:51.436)
and you get a link, you get a time, and you can just join.

Paul Povolni (01:28:56.227)
awesome. I'm definitely going to be checking that out. I think that is the future too, is I think people like people and as much as we get digital and online and all of that stuff, think people talking to people, riffing with people, know, just bouncing ideas off people. think that's never going to stop. That's always going to be part of our wiring of what we desire. And that sounds absolutely amazing. Then you also have a masterclass coming up in Florence, right? In May.

Andy Starr (01:28:58.37)
Yeah, please.

Andy Starr (01:29:16.718)
Fully agree. Fully agree.

Andy Starr (01:29:22.72)
We, yeah, so we have a series, we have all five of our master classes for the first time. They are coming up, the first one is probably by the time your folks hear this. It will have passed, but we're running them through the spring and they build to a live workshop in Florence in May. I think it's the weekend of May 9th or 10th. And that's going to be ridiculous. Like every one of our live classes is better than the one before it.

Paul Povolni (01:29:49.085)
I can imagine.

Andy Starr (01:29:52.706)
but that one's gonna be special. Marty's gonna be there. And we're basically doing almost like a workshop fun. Like we're gonna be doing it after dark, like late into the night across the city itself. Like we're not just gonna sit in a room for three days. Marty's going to be there. And it's kind of like the pinnacle of our program. Everything that we've talked about so far, it all builds to that class.

Paul Povolni (01:30:08.636)
wow.

Andy Starr (01:30:22.24)
If you wanna come to that, there's a waiting list that's already built in. We're trying to add seats as quickly as we can. So if people hear this with enough time and you wanna come, it's on our website. It's levelc.org slash aesthetics, think.

Paul Povolni (01:30:38.665)
All right, awesome. Well, if they go to levelc.org, I'm sure they'll find all that information. Definitely join the Substack. Check that out. Check out the group. And Andy, this has been so good. And thank you so much for taking your time and coming on,

Andy Starr (01:30:41.068)
I'll find it.

Andy Starr (01:30:45.346)
Yep.

Andy Starr (01:30:51.918)
I appreciate you. Thank you very much.