The origin story · why moreHUMAN.org exists

He followed the playbook for 22 years.
A guy in a leather jacket ended it in one sentence.

This is the story behind Stupid Humans, Smart Machines — the backyard BBQ that broke the old rules, the $250,000 mistake that became a book, and why a site about artificial intelligence is called more human.

Three minutes. Worth it. — Christian

The author

Christian MartinDenver, CO

Illustration of a worker trained to be a cog in the machine

do everything right. wait for the reward.State College, PA → 2008

Origin story · 01

A kid from a Pennsylvania hill town
does everything you're supposed to do.

Christian grew up in State College, Pennsylvania, riding a ski "mountain" that was really a hill. After high school he packed his car and drove west to Colorado — seven friends in a three-bedroom apartment, lots of bunk beds — delivering pizzas at night, drifting sideways through I-70 blizzards in a Nissan Altima, hoping for a $5 tip.

He snowboarded every day and ended up winning the collegiate national championship in slopestyle. Then he did the responsible thing: spent his entire pizza savings on the first tuition payment, chose the "safe" major — finance — and ground out a 4.0. On graduation day, a friend shook his hand and said, "congratulations, your life is over."

It was 2008. Lehman collapsed, the internships evaporated, and the honors grad couldn't get a single callback — just spam and Nigerian scammers in his university inbox. In his own words: "It felt like I had been made obsolete overnight. I was invisible. I was… worthless."

If you were raised on the same playbook — follow the rules and the system takes care of you — you know the feeling. The rules were written for a world that quietly stopped existing.

The sentence

OVERHEARD AT A BACKYARD BBQ

"I make about $2,000 a day.
From a guitar tuner app."

the guy in the leather jacketInciting incident

Origin story · 02

Then a guy in a leather jacket said one sentence
that broke his brain.

That weekend, at a backyard BBQ in downtown Denver, Christian spotted a guy with a big scraggly beard smoking a cigarette on a log bench. He confessed he felt like a failure. The guy asked what he made. Then, deadpan: "I make about $2,000 a day."

"What do you do?" "Do you play guitar? Ever used a guitar tuner app on your iPhone?" Christian had one on his phone right there. "I made that. Two years ago. It still brings in 2K a day."

Not a company. Not a career. Not a ladder with a boss holding it. A piece of software, built once, working while its maker smoked on a log. Instead of leveraging credentials to climb the ladder, the guy had leveraged technology — no permission required, no "right background," no caring what the markets did.

That was the moment the old playbook died for Christian. He'd later call it his "Alfred putting down the stick" moment — seventeen years before he'd have the language for it. (Who's Alfred? Chapter one of the book. You'll never forget him.)

Christian Martin receiving a Two Comma Club award on stage

It worked. Eventually.The receipts →

Origin story · 03

$1,800 on a zero-interest credit card.
Everyone said it would never work.

Christian couldn't code. (Still can't.) So he found a real problem people would pay to solve, hired a team to build it for $1,800 on an 18-month zero-interest credit card — while friends and family told him it would never work — and shipped his own iPhone app.

Within a couple of months it hit the top 10 in paid finance apps. One morning he woke up and realized he'd made more money while asleep than he would have made working all day at the job nobody would give him.

In 2013, when his real estate boss offered him the ten-year track — corner office, BMW, the house to match — he sold 90% of what he owned and got on a plane to Costa Rica with a school-sized backpack and two shirts. From that backpack, over the years, came the largest online snowboard school in the world (he taught what won him the championship) and a multi-million-dollar education company run from 25 countries.

Three times he bet early on a technology shift. Three times the bet crossed a million dollars. By every scoreboard that mattered, the kid nobody would hire had won. Which is exactly when the market threw its hardest punch.

−$250,000

2 YEARS · 1 OVERSEAS DEV TEAM

$250,000.
Never shipped.

the most expensive lesson of his lifeRock bottom

Origin story · 04

Then he bet $250,000 on the old way of building.
It never shipped.

In 2020, convinced software was the next move, Christian hired an overseas team of developers. Calls at 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. Six months in: no workable prototype. Small changes took weeks. After more than two years and over $250,000, he gave up. The product never launched.

The money hurt. What hurt more was what it seemed to prove: that even after everything, building the thing still meant renting other people's hours, burning years, and praying. The leverage the leather-jacket guy had — build once, own the upside — still felt locked behind a door he couldn't open.

That's the state he was in when a strange new tool appeared in December 2022 — and he did the one thing that changed everything: he didn't scroll past it.

Garry Kasparov playing Deep Blue — the birth of the Centaur

the machine won. then the hybrids beat the machine.The Centaur

Origin story · 05

One afternoon in 2024, he rebuilt the $250K product.
Alone. With AI. Zero code written.

He was in ChatGPT the week it launched and shipped the first ChatGPT course we know of that same week — December 2022. But the real moment came later: in 2024 he sat down and rebuilt the exact product that ate $250,000 and two years — by himself, in one afternoon, directing AI. In his words: "And it was better."

Staring at a working version of his most expensive failure, he finally understood what he was looking at. It had a name — from chess, of all places. After Deep Blue beat Kasparov, the tournaments that followed weren't won by grandmasters or supercomputers. They were won by Centaurs — ordinary humans directing machines. Two amateurs on off-the-shelf laptops beat them all.

AI was never coming for him. It was coming for the robot he'd been trained to be. The taste, the judgment, the knowing-what's-worth-building — the human part — had just become the most valuable thing he owned.

That realization became a book — the story of Alfred the knocker-upper, Henry Ford's assembly line, the 100-year glitch that trained us all to work like machines, and the Centaur's playbook for what comes next.

The receipts

Three early bets on technology.
Three seven-figure results.

Each award below is a Two Comma Club — ClickFunnels' mark for a single funnel that's crossed $1,000,000. Every one came from moving on a shift before the crowd did. AI is the fourth curve.

TWO COMMA CLUB

A top-10 iPhone app

Bet on mobile back when "just build an app" still sounded insane.

$1,000,000+

TWO COMMA CLUB

A multi-million education company

Built online learning — run from 25 countries — while the world still drove to an office.

$1,000,000+

TWO COMMA CLUB

AI software · 10,000+ customers

Moved on AI early — exactly the shift the book hands to you.

$1,000,000+

Same instinct, three times over: see the curve, move before everyone else. The book is him handing you the fourth one.

Origin story · 06

Full circle.
The kid nobody would hire wrote the book he needed that day.

These days Christian lives in Denver with his wife Shoshanna. He builds AI software with 10,000+ customers, writes to an audience of millions, and has done handstands on six continents (backflips too — he'll show you).

Stupid Humans, Smart Machines is the book he wishes someone had handed him in 2008 — before the wasted years, before the $250K, before learning all of it the hard way. And the name of this site is the whole thesis: the most valuable thing you can become in the age of machines is the one thing a machine will never be. More human.

Christian and Shoshanna on their wedding day

Christian & ShoshannaThe good part

Full circle

what the leverage was actually forDenver, CO

The stuff a bio leaves out

Seventeen years of betting on technology.
Zero plans to be normal about it.

🏆National ChampionCollegiate snowboard slopestyle — then built the largest online snowboard school in the world.

🍕Five winters of pizza deliveryBlizzards on I-70, $5 tips, one long-suffering Nissan Altima.

🌍25 countriesRan a multi-million-dollar education company from a school-sized backpack.

⌨️Still can't codeBuilt a top-10 iPhone app and AI software with 10,000+ customers anyway.

🤖Week one of ChatGPTLaunched the first ChatGPT course we know of — December 2022.

🤸6 continentsHandstands and backflips on every one of them. Antarctica pending.

🍍Pineapple on pizzaUnapologetic. This is the hill.

🥁Rookie drummer & guitaristAn introvert who writes to millions and still practices scales badly.

Speaking & podcasts

Want this story on your stage?

Christian speaks to companies, conferences, and podcasts about the AI transition — no doom, no hype, and no slideware written by a committee. The same story you just read, told live, with the playbook attached.

Stupid Humans, Smart Machines — why AI is coming for the robot they trained you to be, and the promotion hiding inside that sentence
Becoming the Centaur — how ordinary people direct AI to out-produce entire teams (with the $250K-mistake-to-one-afternoon story)
The next decade of work — what to tell your team, your industry, and your kids

Invite Christian to speak[email protected] · include your event, date & audience

On stage

bring the leather jacket storyKeynotes

Stupid Humans, Smart Machines book cover

That's his story.
The next ten years are yours.

The whole argument — the glitch, Alfred, the Centaur, and exactly what to become on the other side of it — is in the book. Read it this afternoon. And when you're ready to prove it, the Centaur Certification™ turns what you've become into a credential anyone can verify.

You can put the stick down.

Get the bookInstant access · 30-day guarantee Get Centaur CertifiedThe credential that proves you can direct AI

See you on the other side.
— Christian "the guitar-tuner guy was right" Martin

He followed the playbook for 22 years.A guy in a leather jacket ended it in one sentence.

A kid from a Pennsylvania hill towndoes everything you're supposed to do.

Then a guy in a leather jacket said one sentencethat broke his brain.

$1,800 on a zero-interest credit card.Everyone said it would never work.

Then he bet $250,000 on the old way of building.It never shipped.

One afternoon in 2024, he rebuilt the $250K product.Alone. With AI. Zero code written.

Three early bets on technology.Three seven-figure results.

A top-10 iPhone app

A multi-million education company

AI software · 10,000+ customers

Full circle.The kid nobody would hire wrote the book he needed that day.

Seventeen years of betting on technology.Zero plans to be normal about it.

Want this story on your stage?

That's his story.The next ten years are yours.

He followed the playbook for 22 years.
A guy in a leather jacket ended it in one sentence.

A kid from a Pennsylvania hill town
does everything you're supposed to do.

Then a guy in a leather jacket said one sentence
that broke his brain.

$1,800 on a zero-interest credit card.
Everyone said it would never work.

Then he bet $250,000 on the old way of building.
It never shipped.

One afternoon in 2024, he rebuilt the $250K product.
Alone. With AI. Zero code written.

Three early bets on technology.
Three seven-figure results.

Full circle.
The kid nobody would hire wrote the book he needed that day.

Seventeen years of betting on technology.
Zero plans to be normal about it.

That's his story.
The next ten years are yours.