Discovering the perfect book by local authors is a great way to dive into reading and expand our knowledge on topics that inspire us. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing with a few Central Coast authors about their latest projects. Their books provide valuable insights, from mastering business branding to exploring the fascinating world of the wine industry.
Brandy: 101 Sips of Wisdom for Attaining a Successful Brand
Reilly Newman, the founder and brand strategist, and Scott Saunders, the designer of Motif Brands, put their years working together and wrote ‘Brandy: 101 Sips of Wisdom for Attaining a Successful Brand.’ The book has been taking the business community by storm and even won 2024 Goody Business Book Award for Marketing and Branding. The co-authors have been busy promoting Motif Brands, their Brandy podcast, and their book.
What was the idea behind writing “Brandy: 101 Sips of Wisdom for Attaining a Successful Brand?
Reilly: “Brandy” is the culmination of three years of writing to educate business owners and marketers about the power of proper branding. We wanted to articulate these big ideas of brand strategy, design, and marketing in an approachable yet insightful way that brings value to our readers. “Brandy” shares our decades of experiences and our philosophy of brand building in short “sips” that can be easily read over a morning coffee or an evening nightcap. Although it covers complex topics that make a real business impact, “Brandy” was designed to make it easy to “sip on” and enjoy so the reader can apply what they learn.
How did both of you decide to take your branding knowledge, combine it, and write ‘Brandy?
Scott: Since Reilly and I comprise Motif Brands and have spent the last six years bringing our collective decades of experience and knowledge together for rebranding clients — and because we each have a knack for writing — it seemed like a no-brainer to write a book together and create a brand around it (which birthed the accompanying podcast show). The main purpose being to educate and dispel many false ideas about branding in general. The reality is many mistakes made by business owners with regard to their brand simply are due to misnomers and a lot of misconceived notions about what branding is and how to really unlock its potential.
When reading your book what would you like your readers to come away with?
Scott: We intentionally wrote and constructed Brandy to be 101 short, distilled chapters (most are only 2-3 pages each) that do not need to be read in any specific order so that it can be easy to read and put down, with each chapter being thought-provoking enough to give the reader time to let things sink in. The principles and concepts of successful branding can’t be treated like a secret recipe. Rather, they are ethereal principles that are all applied in different ways and differently for each brand. So keeping it short and sweet, simple to understand, and giving the reader some takeaway they can hopefully apply gives us the ability to educate and assist a greater audience than simply those that we decide to take on as clients.
Book available on Amazon
The Mad Crush
After almost ten years, author Sean Weir has re-released his novel about the Saucelito Canyon wine industry; ‘The Mad Crush: An Obscure California Vineyard and the Quest to Make One Great Wine.’ The book dives into the process of making wine from ground to glass and also shares stories from Sean’s perspective as well as giving us an approachable history lesson of the region and the people he met working there.
The Mad Crush originally came out in 2015. What made you want to rerelease it almost a decade later?
The first edition of The Mad Crush was very well received, and it developed a bit of a cult following. Yet, in the push to publish it back in 2015, I sacrificed some extra material that I later realized would make for an even richer reading experience. I also thought that it
was a story that a new generation of readers might enjoy discovering. So, I decided to produce an expanded second edition by weaving that extra material back into the main story. I also added an afterword that provides some fresh perspective and context, as well as a section of mini-chapters at the back called ‘Prunings.’ This is where I stuck some oddball extras, things like meeting Eddie Van Halen while working at the Chamisal Vineyard tasting room and Avila Beach getting torn up after an oil leak.
What made you want to write a book about your time working on the 1995 harvest in Saucelito Canyon and everything that came before with Bill Greenough?
When I was working at Saucelito Canyon, Bill would tell me these stories that were hard to believe. He told me about how an itinerant Englishman planted this vineyard way out in the canyon in 1880 and farmed it by horse and plow—mind you; this vineyard is still difficult to reach by car. He told me about growing up in Montecito, then defecting to the communal Mountain Drive community in Santa Barbara, where they stomped grapes in the nude. He told me about leaving all that behind and going off the grid to restore this abandoned old vineyard. All of this—coupled with my own wild harvest season spent working for Bill in 1995—seemed worthy of retelling and putting into the historical record. I also saw the book as a way to honor Bill as a mentor and as someone who put an indelible mark on Central Coast wine history.
TheMadCrush.com
Book can be found on Amazon and Saucelito Canyon tasting room in SLO
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