Author Feature: Mary Marantz
Author of Underestimated (4/29/2025)
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Mary Marantz to discuss her new book, Underestimated. (Learn more at namethefear.com!)
Dannie Lynn Fountain (DLF): Good morning. If you saw on Stories over the weekend. I am doing a live with Mary Marantz today on her launch day. And so we're going to be talking about her book. Hello. Oh my goodness. Hello. How are you? I'm good. I'm so good. I'm so excited to be here.
Mary Marantz (MM): Me too, me too. I saw that you worked the escape room!
DLF: I did, I did. And I have my book, I have my Kindle copy with my notes. Well, it's the manuscript that I sent to my Kindle, but I am so excited. I was thinking, I was actually, I was talking with my wife last night and I was like, Mary and I met almost 15 years ago now and every time.
MM: Is that right?
DLF: Yes! And every time we reconnect it's about books, which I love.
MM: Yeah! I feel like we had, was there a coffee or a drink or something in Seattle? Probably years ago.
DLF: Yeah, a long time ago! We originally, originally met at a conference. I had never heard of you in my life because I was new to the entrepreneur, the female business owner, entrepreneur world, and you spoke at a conference and I was second row and five minutes in the tears started and I just sobbed the entire 60 minutes. This was pre-Dirt. You were still a full-time wedding photographer at the time. This was pre Poshmark business, pre everything, and here we are.
MM: Yeah, I feel like we have a lot of overlap in our stories and the dedication page of underestimating with my first two books, I dedicated it to people in my life. There was for Justin and to my family, and I dedicated slow growth to my coach and friend Kim. But this one I just really felt called to make it less of, I don't know, the traditional kind dedication and more to tell people who it's really for. And it's like that idea of hard story people are my kind of people and beautiful people do not just happen, which is a quote, and I don't know what it is, but there's just something about hard story people.
DLF: It's like game recognized game. I think it's not only hard story people, but it's a shared language that can't be taught. So much of the empathy that we develop among people can be taught. You can learn to see things through other people's eyes. You can learn about people's experience, but there's something about a hard story that creates a shared value that can't be taught.
MM: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Gosh, now I'm going to spend the next week thinking about what that is. I don't know what it is either, but there's something. There's something, yeah. I think in regards to that dedication, it kind of talks about this is actually a line from Dirt, but “pain progressively finer gets the sandpaper rounds off the hard edges.” Whereas I feel like if you have not yet had something hard in your story, you kind of don't know it, but you're walking around in the world with, I picture this is so random, this is how my brain works, the boxes that Barbies come in, so they're plastic, but they're really sharp on the edges and you don't know it, but you're walking around just leaving these sort of deaths by a thousand cuts on other people. And then you go, one of the things that's been really transformative for me is I used to get really frustrated with easy story people. They felt very plastic to me and very surface. And then I realized when you add in the variable of time, sooner or later, most of us become hard story people.
DLF: Yes! It's funny though, because this is so timely. I was at personal training, I weightlift once a week and last week we were talking about our stories. He is also a hard story person. There's so much very fascinating how that shows up in weightlifting, but he asked me last week, have you ever experienced a traumatic bone break? And I was like, well, this is out of left field. And I was like, no, I fractured the growth plate in my foot when I was 12 and that was it. And he said, there's something about this world that recognizes that those who hold the most internal trauma deserve to have the least external trauma. And he was anecdotally, but I dunno if this is real. He says, the people with the hardest stories that I've met have experienced the least amount of bone breaks, et cetera. And I was like, what?
MM: I've never broken a bone—maybe once.
DLF: Fascinating. And he was completely anecdotal, not scientific, but he was like, the people I meet with, the hard stories have experienced the least physical trauma.
MM: Wow. Unless the physical trauma is part of it.
DLF: Yeah exactly. We're talking like bone breaks, those sorts of things.
MM: Wow. Now I’ll be thinking about that for the next week.
DLF: Me too! Well, I want to ask you, because I've been watching the writing process of this book and I feel I'm projecting here and it's fine. You can tell me I'm projecting, but I feel like writing Dirt was a story you had to tell. Writing Slow Growth was in a lot of ways a story of your triumph, which then led to writing Underestimated. I've seen it in your stories and your posts being the hardest thing you ever did. But also, is it just me or was the journey of writing Underestimated, basically staring at yourself in the mirror for two years?
MM: For sure. For sure.
DLF: You're writing all of this advice for other people, and as I'm reading it, I'm like, wow, I could have seen myself writing something similar, but also I needed to read this. And so I feel like writing this book for Mary was two years of writing things you needed to hear.
MM: A hundred percent. And also, I don't know, I feel like all three books have met me in that they were the book that I needed because Slow Growth ultimately became a story of triumph. But when I started writing it, it was like I was riddled with the same boring scripts of fear of can that actually be done? Can you actually stop achieving for your worth? Is anybody going to care about this? Are people going to think it's just pretty so it doesn't have purpose? But yeah, I feel like I think what you are for sure feeling and putting words to and picking up on is that this is the book of the three where I gave myself permission to show up as the most Mary. I have an all three. The humor is allowed there. It's got a kind of a sharp edge, not the Intelligence IQ and the EQ show up really big. The deep thoughts, the quirky pop culture references. There's always a thing behind the thing, the plays on words. Everything that inner critic, dear John would like to tell me makes people roll their eyes. I was just like, I don't care.
DLF: No, that makes sense. The day that I started reading this book was one of the hardest days I've had in my eight years at Google at work. And so I tuck myself into bed and I started reading it, and my wife and I have been together five years. She's heard me talk about you. We've been together for all three of your book launches now. But it was that night because as I was reading the book out loud, it was that night that it finally clicked for her too, why this person is so important. So my wife is an attorney, my wife, because of a house fire loss also grew up in a dirt floor home. So I've been telling her all of these years, like Mary Marantz’s story, Mary Marantz’s story, and we almost had this bonding moment last week as I was reading aloud to her from Underestimated of like, wow. Because at first, as I read your books, I go, gosh, there's something about the way Mary writes. She connects with everyone. And I've had to peel that back and go, no, not every book is for every person. If you're resonating with this book as much as you are, you should probably pay attention to that. And I think it clicked for my wife last week too. So our house, our whole Murphy house over here has been Underestimated for the whole last week.
MM: I love that. Oh my gosh, that makes me so happy. Is she a practicing attorney?
DLF: Yeah, her full-time job, she is a practicing attorney for the federal government. So a little different in that she didn't pivot away from the law, but she is so good at it.
MM: Oh my gosh. Yeah. A lot of my friends from law school, when I talk about this was not becoming, being a lawyer would've felt like a life without exclamation points for me. I have friends who are doing it and they are just like, their brains just come alive.
DLF: Yeah. I also want to ask, so there's, so speaking of the pop culture reference and then the deeper meaning, there's so much metaphor in underestimated in the literal cover in the way the book is structured, in the way this is in the table of content. So I'm not revealing anything, but the way that, to me, the table of contents is almost structured like an Everest expedition as someone who loves Everest, what if someone isn't a hard story person and they're reading this book and they're on this Everest narrative. What do you hope that non-hard story people get from Underestimated?
MM: What's wild about this book that has felt really different? Actually, Dannie, Dirt is my story, and it's like you, so in the publishing world, let's back up a second. In the publishing world, there's this phrase with them, “what's in it for me?”
And publishers and authors are always trying to answer that question on behalf of the reader. What's felt reader need? What's in it for them to read this book? Why are they going to spend their money to buy it or their time more importantly to buy it? And so Dirt was my story. And I think for me that I think there's a lot of thinking aloud moments that are for the reader in there, but that's a harder sell. It's a harder sell to tell people You're going to get a lot out of my story. That had to spread really by word of mouth of people being like, no, really, you need to read this. It'll make you understand things, whatever. And then Slow Growth was a very specific kind of book. This book in particular has been really fun because it is just so on. Its face felt reader need just that title.
It's got an instant kind of yes sort of feel to it. And then I start listing off like, oh, people pleasing and productionism overthinking all the boring ways, fear shows up, imposter syndrome, even fears of success, 14 total. And they're like, well, I need that book. I've never had that experience before. Well then, and so it is very, very much a book for pretty much everybody, the lone soul people who never experienced any of these kind of fears. Please teach a course the rest of us literally though what you're doing or you're just completely disconnected from reality or whatever, I don't know, or the world or whatever. Anyway, so it is very cool that it's got this very, very broad appeal. And then it's also got this really strong hard bullseye target at the center of, I want everybody who feels fear to read this book and I think it's going to be transformative for them.
And then the hard story people, this gives me chills and it makes me want to cry every time I think about it. I picture that generation of generation changers when they can get set free of fear, when they can get set free of these lead weights, limiting beliefs, turn lead weights tied up around their ankles. I just have this picture of a generation of people sprinting towards the work they were called to do. And I rarely write in sprint metaphors. It's marathons, it's mountain climbing, but I just see this wave of people running towards the work creative for them. And it's like when I think about that, it feels like a shock wave, not a ripple effect. And these just sort of slashes through people's family trees of there was a before you and there was an after you. And for hard story people, so many of us have come so far already and we've done so much already. And so it feels extra frustrating when we can't break through to that next level and we keep being our own worst enemy when we keep repeating the lesson until it's learned only. We never seem to learn it when it feels like we're climbing up a mountain, like walking through molasses.
And I feel like if those people who have excellence, who have gifts, who have talents, who have purpose, who have work they were put here to do, when those people are given platforms and authority and are in the position to help others, they're the ones who are really going to do it because of what we were talking about earlier. So every time I say that, I feel like I just get head to toe body chills because the book is for everybody. That's been so fun, and I can simultaneously hold that. What got me up off the floor writing this book on those days, it got hard was those people.
This is a hundred percent Mary and I don't want to do it any other way.
DLF: I think the timing for me of this book is interesting. Whether or not folks resonate with astrology, it mirrors real life, so blah, blah, blah. Pluto has been in millennials astrology charts for 15 years, 12 years, 15 years, something like that. Okay. When you go backwards and you look at when the clock that 15 year started, 2008 financial crisis. And so you think about the millennial generation was in, well, I'm a Gen Z cusp baby, so we'll set me aside because I'm a baby, baby.
MM: (chuckles) I'm a Gen X cusp baby.
DLF: (chuckles) So me literal elementary school, most millennials, elementary, middle school, when 9/11 happened, then they graduated into the 2008 financial crisis. Then right as they were getting their feet under them, covid happened. As we're exiting now, we're in yet another market crisis. And so I see Underestimated as being also a book for a generation maybe since the silent generation, no generation has been kicked in the teeth as many times repeatedly as millennials have. And this is the book of you have been sold this message of underestimated because you keep getting kicked in the teeth now do something about it. I see it as a book for a generation too.
MM: I mean, I thought I was having chills before I'm physically hot over here.
DLF: Well, it's because millennials keep getting fed this message that if you overcome this crisis, it'll be okay. Coming out of Covid, it was, okay, you survive the 2008 financial crisis. You've survived Covid. Things are going to turn around now. And then 2025 came knocking. So I think this book comes at the perfect time to say, stop waiting for the universe to settle down. You've got to figure it out.
MM: Wow. Do you know what's also wild? Is that in one way or another, I'm going to say it's probably up to a dozen people at this point have said to me in one way or a different way, that the timing of this, there's this combination of the timing of this and then this message that keeps coming up about expanding the tent, expanding the territory. So basically right message for right time that I've, again, never experienced with the previous two books. I don't know what it means yet, but something!
DLF: I'm going to push back on that. So your original book deal, if I remember correctly, was a three book deal. So think about when Dirt came out —what a time to publish a book. But Dirt came out at a time when people were forced to sit at home in their shit. And so Dirt comes out and for the hard story people, they're reading Dirt. And at least for me, reading Dirt required sitting in my own story. And then there's been the last five years, and now you're almost bookending that with you've had five years to process your story, you understand yourself better. You're coming out and again, now do something about it.
MM: Yeah, that and you're a hundred percent right. I've also been calling them bookend books or fraternal twin books because if Dirt’s sort of the movie version of my life, how we are, Underestimated, I've been joking, is the textbook version of Why We Are the Way we are. But it's more fun than a textbook. So nobody listening gets scared. They do very much go together and it feels like a loop kind of closing or something.
DLF: I hope this isn't, I mean, I just said, oh, your original book deal. I hope this isn't your last book. I mean, I know you had to literally peel yourself off the floor with this one, but I hope it's not the last one.
MM: So actually the book deal was for five. Oh, good. Good, good. We may or may not have just shoehorned in a sixth one, which will now be the fourth one that comes out next year.
DLF: I'm excited. Good. I need my biannual dose of Marantz Wisdom!
MM: Deal. Deal. As long as I yes, can keep peeling myself off the floor. But yeah, I did a podcast yesterday and very, very amazing show and great questions. And I'm trying to think of exactly how he worded it, but he was like, so basically he was like, so what's it like to live with you? You spend a year writing this book where you're in the throes of it and then six months at least more like a year launching it, and then you start over. It's like, yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. For sure.
DLF: And this isn't, this isn't your only thing either, which again, game recognizes game, oftentimes full-time author and someone with a now six book deal is a full-time author that doesn't end. But also you still have elements of photography. You do business coaching. I'm pretty sure you're still running your very successful Poshmark business, this isn’t it.
MM: Right. Yes. And I think, gosh, I'm trying to think if we even want to go down this rabbit hole. Basically, this is one of those cases of the beautiful and the hard, or maybe it is not lost on me that I, Justin and I both work from home. We are sort of both into this. We're not really running to soccer practices and things like that because we had have and had tried to start a family and it didn't happen. So one of the, I don't even know the words I'm saying, how I feel about them yet Danny, but we'll just call it Silver Linings of Heartbreak, is that I am able to really birth books into the world since I haven't been able to birth a baby into the world. So that's the heart and the beautiful being held in both hands. And I don't know, when I look at the breadcrumbs in reverse in my life, there's this familiarity, this nostalgia there that tells me there were glimpses of this all along, that the birthing of books was going to be a great part of the work of my life.
DLF: Oh, I don't think you knew. I knew anyone knew, but the way that, because you walked the female entrepreneurship conference circuit for years, your presentations were never build this light room preset, mix this thing, frame your shot with the rule of thirds. Your talks were always storytelling.
MM: Yeah. And what's kind of cool, I think this is a fun aside for us to have, is some of the tricky things fear will do is in the book I talk about, it will attack you in the cross hair intersection where your gifts meet your story. And the first time anybody ever called me a storyteller, it was at the Rising Tide Leadership Summit, New Orleans and Jessica Rasdall, who was also speaking there, I gave my talk and I came down, we were sitting at the same table and she grabbed my hand and she said, you are such a storyteller. And what fear made me hear was, you're all story no substance. You're all talked and meandering and long-winded, but no, you never land the plane or whatever. I do not think that's how she, it would probably be like, what are you talking about? But it took me a long time to really not just be okay, but really own that storytelling was actually one of the most powerful ways we can teach people. We know humans learn best by story. So that's fun. That's one of those things where it's like fear's going to have, you only hear the downside
And it'll mess with your head and make you ever think how you do things if you let it. So that's going back to why it was so important for me earlier to not let fear stop me from writing it exactly how I would write it if I was the only one who was going to read it.
DLF: I think when she was doing full-time speaking coaching, I think her business tagline was the message or the messages in the mess or something that feels very aligned to the way you storytell. So yeah, it makes sense.
MM: Yeah, in her mind, she was probably giving the ultimate accolade.
DLF: Yeah! Well, I know that today is launch day and you have so much celebrating to do. So for everyone who hasn't grabbed Underestimated yet, what do they need to know? I saw that the launch week bonus situation was extended. Tell us all the things.
MM: So I would head over to namethefear.com, because we have a few things up there. We have the whole first chapter up that they can download and read right away for free, grab that, get a kind of feel for all that writing we've been describing, the storytelling, the visual metaphors, et cetera, that plays on words. And that Jurassic Park is on the same page as Pandora's Box and deep philosophical thoughts. It's going to range between those two. So check out the free chapter and then, yes, my publisher very amazingly extended when you order through the end of launch week. So Friday you're going to get the whole audio book for free, which is most publishers, I can tell you do not do that. That's a huge, huge bonus. It's like in two books for the price of one to highlight and markup and put notes in the margin, and one to listen to me wax poetic as I read it to you like a storyteller. And so you can go find all that at namethefear.com. When you're there, you'll see a fun quiz we have, that's the achiever quiz. It'll tell you what your achiever type is of the five types and how your type in particular play small and what you can do about it. And then I'm @marymarantz, as you can see here on Instagram. Come tell me if you watched the live, come tell me if you took the quiz, you got the book. All the things.
DLF: Amazing. I'm so excited. And seriously, from one author to another, y'all, it is huge for the publisher to be giving away the audiobook. Sometimes audiobook production is more expensive than printing the actual books. That's huge. So take advantage and y'all know, if you head over to your favorite audiobook place, that's like 25, $30 of value that you're getting for free, not to be a sales person. But seriously, when I saw that, I was like, oh my gosh, Mary's publisher knows what's up.
Well, thank you so much. Have the best day today. I know this is launch number three for you, but I hope you catch a moment to just, I don't know, sit in the energy of today at some point. And I hope it's a great launch week for you.
MM: Thank you. And that's such good advice. So many things like dinging and buzzing on launch day. The first time that happened with dirt, it was very overwhelming and end of the day, what just happened to me. So to go outside I think a couple of times today and just actually step back and observe it all happening is very good advice.
DLF: Amazing. Thanks as always. I will take any excuse to catch up with you and we'll talk soon.
MM: Same. Thanks for doing this. And of course we'll talk in the DMs!
FIN.
Thank you so much to Mary Marantz for taking the time!
About Mary: Mary Marantz is the bestselling author of Dirt and Underestimated, as well as the host of the popular podcast The Mary Marantz Show. She grew up in a trailer in rural West Virginia and was the first in her family to go to college before going on to Yale for law school. Her work has been featured on CNN, MSN, Business Insider, Bustle, Thrive Global, Southern Living, Hallmark Home & Family and more. She and her husband Justin live in an 1880s fixer-upper by the sea in New Haven, Connecticut, with their two very fluffy golden retrievers, Goodspeed and Atticus. Learn more at MaryMarantz.com.
You can find Underestimated at all your favorite book retailers.