Startup Social: Marcus Cook, Digital Strategist, Co-Founder at The Success Bug

The well-planned life is not always the successful life. Though we try to order our college lives into perfection with our four-year academic schedules, stable jobs, and long-term career visions, the truth is that life and its chaos will often find a way to upset our best-laid plans.

An important value in achieving success is the ability to adjust, re-route, and make the best of any situation. This is one of the hallmarks of entrepreneurship — the ability to see unpredictability not as a foe but as an opportunity for creating something new. Using life’s disruptions to one’s own advantage and to chart a new path is a powerful way to discover possibilities and innovate.

Marcus Cook ’19, a Whitman School of Management grad, is an individual who exemplifies the power of using change to create something wonderful. Cook, who graduated with a double major in supply chain and marketing, worked purposefully throughout school to create a high-level career for himself. After he graduated, he went on to work a finance job, confident he was setting out on a stable upward career path. However, his plans went awry when he and a group of other employees were let go within his first few months of starting out.

With what some would view as a disaster, Cook took his layoff as a push to pursue his passions and take a bold chance towards success. He started a company centered around a passion that had always been an integral part of his life: entrepreneurship.

Come to the LaunchPad on October 15th at 3 p.m. for a Startup Social with Marcus Cook.