ABOUT MARTY
Hi, I’m Marty.
I’ve spent most of my adult life helping people make work better. For a long time, that was the main thing.
01 ⸱ WHERE IT STARTED
A question I still think about.
I got into leadership young, and like a lot of new leaders, I thought doing a good job meant hitting the numbers, solving problems, and keeping things moving. Then came a performance review I still think about.
We were looking at a team member’s call stats and quality scores, and they weren’t where they needed to be. When we talked about how to improve, she asked a simple question:
“When was I told this was the expectation?”
She was right. I had expectations in my head that I had never made clear to her.
I walked away realizing something I probably should have understood much earlier: you can’t hold people accountable for a version of success they were never given a chance to see.
That conversation changed the way I thought about leadership and started a question I’ve been chasing ever since: how do we make work better so people can live better lives?
02 ⸱ BUILDING BETTER WORK
Twenty-plus years of making work better.
That question shaped the next twenty-plus years. I spent 11 years with Advantage Answering Plus, a small family-owned company, eventually as Director of Vision + Culture. We wrote a three-year vision, got intentional about culture, leadership, growth, and the employee experience, and watched a small Central Coast business become nationally recognized as one of the best small companies to work for.
It showed me what can happen when people get clear about what they want to build, put words around it, and start making decisions that move them toward it.
In 2016 I started CultureStoke to help businesses, nonprofits, schools, cities, and leadership teams make work better. For the next decade, I got to see the same lesson play out in very different organizations: clarity changes what people notice, decide, and build. I still do that work today.
03 ⸱ THE QUESTION THAT GOT LOUDER
What about the rest of life?
Somewhere along the way, I watched Finding Joe, a film exploring Joseph Campbell’s work. One idea stayed with me: what if you spend years climbing, only to realize the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall?
I’d seen it everywhere. People climbing because they were told to, because it was expected. “I’ll be happy when…” A life built on conditions instead of a vision.
Most of us are good at planning meetings, projects, vacations, budgets, and next Tuesday. But ask someone what they want their life to look and feel like three years from now, and things get a little quieter.
Life moves fast. We make the practical choice, then another, then another. Before we know it, we can end up living a life we never consciously chose. It might even be a really good life. It just got built more by default than by design.
04 ⸱ WHY STOKED BY DESIGN
Intention is a conscious choice.
Stoked By Design grew out of my own life. I wanted to live it more intentionally, and I’m still working on that every day.
To me, intention isn’t about controlling every part of life. It’s about noticing where I do have a choice and trying to make that choice line up with what matters most. For me right now, it’s often small things, like when I pick up my phone in the morning, or whether I’m actually present while reading stories with my son, or making space to talk at the end of the day, because that relationship matters to me more than anything waiting in my inbox.
Wherever you are, there’s usually some choice available, even a small one. That’s where we start.
Over time, I’ve started thinking about the work in three connected ways:
Build a better life.
Get clear about what you actually want.
Build a better relationship with work.
Understand what you need from work tof it to support that life.
Build better places to work.
Help create workplaces where other people can do the same.
Stoked By Design starts with the first one.
05 ⸱ WHAT STOKE MEANS
Feeling alive, hard parts included.
To me, stoke means feeling alive: present, curious, connected, growing. It’s doing work that matters, laughing with people you love, and getting outside. It’s the feeling of actually being in your life while it’s happening, hard parts included.
I’ve never had a perfect plan. What’s helped me most is having a direction: a picture of what I’d love to create, a little space to hear myself think and a willingness to take the next right step. Sometimes that’s a big change. More often, it’s a conversation, a boundary, a small experiment, or finally saying yes to something that’s been quietly calling.
A vision is a compass, not a contract.
You’re allowed to change, and so is the vision. The point is to take part in your future, even when you can’t predict it.
06 ⸱ WHAT I DO
Good questions, honest reflection.
I create experiences that help people slow down long enough to get clear about what they want and what they might do next: workshops, walks, conversations, one-on-one sessions, and retreats.
No gurus. No life hacks. No weird stuff. And no expectations that I have the answers for your life. Just good questions, honest reflection, a little imagination, and practical ways to start moving.
Your life is yours to design. I’m here to help you see it a little more clearly.
IN THEIR WORDS
“Marty has a way of seeing what you can’t yet see in yourself and helping you step into it with clarity and confidence.”
Jasmine Dexter
Workshop Participant
07 ⸱ A LITTLE MORE ABOUT ME
Husband, dad, surfer, recovering overthinker.
I’m a husband, dad, surfer, camper, facilitator, recovering overthinker, and lifelong learner. I live on California’s Central Coast, where my best thinking happens near the ocean, under the redwoods, or around a campfire, somewhere with enough space to remember that most of what feels urgent probably isn’t.
These days the work feels both simpler and bigger: helping people build better lives, figure out how work fits into them, and create better placces for other people to work too. And I’m figuring it out right alongside you.
08 ⸱ INFLUENCES
Ideas I keep coming back to.
Joseph Campbell
THE JOURNEY CHANGES YOU.
Campbell’s work reminds us that a meaningful life isn’t a straight line. We leave familiar territory, encounter things we didn’t expect, get changed by them, and carry something back. The hard chapters count as much as the good ones. They’re part of what shapes us.
Alan Watts
LIFE IS A DANCE.
Watts uses music as a metaphor for life. We don’t listen to a song just to hurry toward the final note. The point is what happens while it’s playing. The idea reminds us not to turn life into one long prerequisite for some future moment when we finally get to enjoy it.
Sport Psychology
SEE IT. REHEARSE IT.
Athletes have long used visualization and mental rehearsal to picture themselves performing before the moment arrives. A life vision uses a similar principle: the clearer we can see something, the easier it becomes to recognize the choices and behaviors that move us toward it.
Putting it together
Campbell reminds us that life is a journey that changes us.
Watts reminds us not to miss the dance while chasing the destination.
Sports psychology reminds us that what we repeatedly picture can influence how we prepare + show up.
Somewhere in the middle of these ideas is where Stoked By Design lives:
See a future worth moving toward.
Participate in building it.
Remember to be alive while you’re getting there.
So, where are you headed?
I don’t know what your version of a good life looks like.
That’s kind of the point.
But I do believe it’s worth giving yourself enough space to find out.
Think + Dream BIG
Because someday is a dangerous place to store the things that make us feel alive.
Ready to start your vision?
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