I’d love to be able to detach my work and my life. To be able to view my career as a job like a lot of my friends do. To be able to entirely switch off at 6pm and enter ‘personal life’ mode. Please send advice! I do have a problem with working too much, but mostly because I love it ... but it’s also impor tant to switch off, to touch grass, to swim in the sea, to wander the streets of Lisbon aimlessly without a phone for six hours on a Saturday af ternoon. I’m teaching myself ever y thing I can about the crossovers bet ween the creator and cr ypto economies, as a wave of new ways to fund creative endeavors is on the horizon. We need a better understanding of theor y and to foster insatiable curiosit y. We of ten say, “Oh, that works in theor y but ...” when the truth of the matter is that there is an underlying physics to ever y thing around us. Theor y helps us understand the phenomenal world and how to leverage the controllables that drive more predictable outcomes. My acquisition of theor y has been the biggest cheat code in my career. This is why I star ted a pursuit in academia to complement and augment my practice. The t wo together is a lethal combination. The better we know people, the better our chances of influencing them, which is the core function of marketing. This, of course, requires that we move from a state of cer taint y to a state of curiosit y. This is a state where we obser ve what's around us with inquisitiveness. Comedians are the best at this, by the way. They spend their days just watching people until something makes them go, “hmm, that was interesting.” Perspective and proximit y is key to the future of our industr y. I’m great at communication, I love to chat and tell a stor y. I’m working on my listening. I'm currently interested in understanding more about the media landscape as I believe there's a lot of untapped potential in getting creative with the new ways we stream content . Branded enter tainment is something I'm diving into, and excited about the potential to tell meaningful brand stories with a myriad of creators. At the end of the day, I strive to make ads that enter tain and educate rather than interrupt and annoy. Mart y Marcu s r aven Myr a “Theor y helps us understand the phenomenal world and how to leverage the controllables that drive more predictable outcomes.” — Marcus Rewriting romantic my ths of the creative industr y 48 Re alit y check