Marcus Whitney is the author of Amazon bestseller Create and Orchestrate: The Path to Claiming Your Creative Power from an Unlikely Entrepreneur.  Early in his professional career, Marcus was a college dropout waiting tables seven days a week, but he taught himself to code, became an entrepreneur, and eventually became a venture capitalist.  He is co-founder and partner at Jumpstart Health Investors and he more recently launched Jumpstart Nova.  His work has been covered by The Atlantic, Fast Company and TechCrunch. Marcus is also a co-founder and minority owner of the Nashville Soccer Club, Nashville’s MLS team, and the producer and host of The Creative Power Podcast. 

I connected with Marcus through Nexus and I’m so glad I did! He joins me today to share openly about the challenges he has faced, overcome and to explain his inspiring life journey. Marcus talks about his experience becoming and being an entrepreneur and author; offers thoughts on how he thinks about the world, himself and the concept of story; and comments on the power that entrepreneurship, words and healthy self-care all hold.     

“If there is anything I’ve learned through the process of writing a book, it is that words matter, and semantics matter… [T]he world operates on precision.” – Marcus Whitney

This week on The School for Good Living Podcast:

• How showing up for others and doing meaningful work are essential to life
• Why it may be better to hold purpose statements loosely
• How Marcus defines himself and what he’s passionate about
• Why it is valuable to come to terms with challenges overcome and every version of yourself
• How Marcus’ insight arises from personal experience and stories
• Why prisons are dehumanizing and mentoring inmates brought concrete results
• The power of reflecting on our lives and sharing our stories to inspire others
• It’s Marcus’ job to spread the word about the power of entrepreneurship to others
• How Marcus applies the four burners theory
• How his eight core concepts, the concept of frameworks and inheritability, operate
• Entrepreneurship is a sport and life involves a time budget
• Words and semantics matter and the world operates on precision
• What life is like, what t-shirt Marcus wears, and why he gave up alcohol
• Insight regarding change, race, money and making relationships work
• Marcus began his book five years ago as a Kickstarter project
• How calling, Claire, a TEDx talk and leaving town helped with writing and editing
• What resources may be helpful for a writer and ideas for marketing a new book
• Marcus’ final advice for listeners to understand themselves and their lives

Resources Mentioned:

• Create and Orchestrate: The Path to Claiming Your Creative Power from an Unlikely Entrepreneur by Marcus Whitney
• The four burners theory
• Ruby on Rails
• The thought of Peter Thiel
• Marcus’ “Create” shirts
• The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer
• The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
• A Native American saying (potentially credited to Chief Seattle)
• Kiva.org
• Kickstarter
• Scrivener
• ProWritingAid
• Grammarly
• Atomic Habits by James Clear

Connect with Stephen:

• Website
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Instagram
• YouTube

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Thanks for tuning into this week’s episode of the School for Good Living Podcast, with your host, Brilliant Miller. If you enjoyed this episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe and leave us a rating and review. 

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