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Steve Jobs said “Your time is limited. Don’t spend it living other people’s lives.” Marcus Withers always knew he would never live someone else’s life. He told his Father when he was a kid “I am going to be successful one day,” and added, “I don’t want to worry about money and never want to work for someone else. I want to make things happen and be a great leader.
“For some people, entrepreneurship is something that happens to them. Sometimes, it’s a series of events that guide them in the right direction. It might be luck — good or bad — or just the instinct to grab an opportunity once it appears. One way or another, plenty of people stumble into entrepreneurship and success. Marcus Withers believes a great man makes the world how they need it to be.
Marcus took the road less traveled to build his burgeoning empire.
His first brush with entrepreneurship started when he was fresh out of high school. At 18, he managed a singing group called Playa. He worked for five years to align the group with their eventual recording contract with Def Jam Records. When he went with the group to a showcase in New York City, he decided to make the process a business.
“That show I saw in New York; I brought that back to Louisville. I showed 20 acts; I had a panel of judges,” Marcus recalls. “Those judges picked a winner, and I sent the winner to New York City to participate in the Sumi Entertainment showcase, which presented in front of the big record labels.”
In his first years of college, he began an event-organizing business. The money was good, and the business was booming, so he dropped out of college.
In and around the successful efforts and business ventures Marcus created, he doubled back to finish his education. He finished his undergraduate studies in 2000 and ultimately went on to get an MBA in management from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2012.
In the midst of his entrepreneurial path, in 1997 he found his bride Misty, and married her in 2001. They have three amazing children; Kennedy, Marcus II, and Hardt, and have lived in Louisville these many years.
His next business started in 2003 when he decided he wanted to acquire his first real estate asset. After completing his first transaction; purchasing, renovating, and selling a residential property, he built that single deal into a 30-unit portfolio.
Marcus liked the business of combining capital gain business opportunities, which provided him with capital to stake his subsequent ventures, with cash flows from the properties he kept in his portfolio.
Next, he moved into setting up music studios and even had a hand in rehabilitating Louisville’s cultural landmark, Joe’s Palm Room.
Getting to where he is now has been an exciting journey. The young Marcus, who was interested in being successful, was an inner-city kid in Louisville, Kentucky, a child of a pair of educators who formed an unorthodox and highly supportive family unit.
“I have actually four great parents because I consider my stepparent’s parents as well,” Marcus says. “My dad got remarried, and my mom got remarried. Every one of them has had a part in my life.”
Marcus set his sights on building something that his family could build intergenerational wealth with. Since 2021, his focus has been on the automotive industry. Withers Automotive owns one car dealership and is working on acquiring a second. The goal is to have ten in the next five to ten years and see a billion dollars in annual revenues.
Withers’ focus on philanthropy and conscientious investments has driven some of his real estate investments toward affordable housing.
