The New York Times reported, "McGucken's course (Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology 101). . . rests on the principle that those who create art should have the skills to own it, profit from it and protect it. "It's about how to make your passion your profession, your avocation your vocation, and to make this long-term sustainable," he said. --New York Times Small Business

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Princeton Club of Southern California: Hero's Odyssey Renaissance Festival: Ideals in Innovation: The Hero's Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival with Dr. E aims to provide students, artists, and entrepreneurs with the inspiration and tools to make their passions their professions--to protect and profit from their ideas--to take ownership in their careers and creations. This entreprenuership event celebrates the ultimate Renaissance Man--Leonardo da Vinci--while saluting "hero's odyssey mythology" in the realms of screenwriting, videogames, film, academia, and robotics--robots inspired by da Vinci's designs.

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Don't Count on It! Reflections on Investment Illusions, Capitalism, "Mutual" Funds, Indexing, Entrepreneurship, Idealism, and Heroes : "Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (Chapter 23) presents a very different interpretation than you might expect from its title. This chapter is based on a lecture I presented to Pepperdine University (CA) students, at the request of Professor Elliot McGucken, as part of his course The Hero's Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology 101. "Dr. E" relies heavily upon such classics as Homer's Odyssey and Dante's Inferno, and honors me by including with these classics my own The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism. This essay focuses on Vanguard's odyssey, a voyage punctuated with challenges, narrow escapes, and ultimate fulfillment. I conlude by urging introspection upon our financial leaders, an idea that failed to get much traction back in 2007 when it might have helped. But these leaders were simply making too much money, taking too much risk, and showing too little concern about the crises then building. . . -p. 436: "It's no mean task to measure up to the high appraisal of my career that has been so generously expressed by Dr. Elliot McGucken. That he has, remarkably, placed my 2005 book, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, on the same reading list as The Odyssey--let alone the same planet!--adds even more to my burden in meeting the expectations of those who are aware of this background. . ." --Vanguard, Saga of Heroes, p. 469, Don't Count on It published 2010 by John Wiley & Sons

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BusinessWeek Reports: Where Entrepreneurship Connects to the Classics "Elliot McGucken, a professor of entrepreneurship at Pepperdine University, bemoans that "a lot of schools have dismissed the idea of teaching the great books." In a recent lecture at Pepperdine, McGucken points out that that one lesson of the classics is, "Chance favors the prepared mind. Instead of viewing risk as a bad thing, we can also view it as a good thing."

The classics inspired America's Declaration of Independence, which McGucken sees as an entrepreneurial document. Life has a way of "calling us to adventure," he concludes." --BusinessWeek

Video for Dr. E's upcoming book The Hero's Odyssey Entrepreneurship Code of Honor.

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"Go Forth and Make a Name For Yourself in Story" --Homer's Odyssey
Begin Today! Audentes Fortuna Juvat (Fortune Favors the Bold) --Virgil's Aeneid

"Story is the soul of a work," wrote Aristotle in his Poetics, adding, "a story is not about men, but about their actions." Thus action will define your business, as you make a name (your brand) for yourself in story. To exalt the long-term value of your enterprise, it makes sense that you must begin with enduring values--living by The Hero's Odyssey Mythology Code of Honor, for there is no surer ticket to the greater wealth of the hero's odyssey than virtous action, indeed--passage cannot be bought by any other means.

Honor makes a great part of the reward of all honorable professions. --Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations

Albert Einstein: “Money only appeals to selfishness and always tempts its owners irresistibly to abuse it. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus, or Gandhi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?”

Blake Mycoskie of TOM'S SHOES: Stories are the most primitive and purest form of communication. The most enduring and galvanizing ideas and values of our vivilization are embedded in our stories, from those of Homer, whose preliterate epic poems united the Greeks' national spirit, and Virgil, whose poems did the same for the Romans, to those told by Jesus, who used parables to teach his disciples. It seems to be in our genetic makeup to capture our best ideas in stories, to enjoy them, to learn them, and to pass them on to others. . . When you have a memorable story about who you are and what your mission is (telling of the ideals you're rendering real via action, just as Achilles, Odysseus, and Socrates acted to render their soul's ideal real in striving towards arete/excellence), your success no longer depends on how experienced you are or how many degrees you have or who you know. A story transcends boundaries, breaks barriers, and opens doors. It is a key to not only starting a business but also to clarifying your own personal identity and choices. . . A story evokes emotion, and emotion forges a connection. . . (Companies) can no longer rely on simple, straightforward ad campaigns, the kind portrayed on the TV show Mad Men. . . At TOMS, our story is very simple: We make great shoes and give away a pair to a child in need for every pair we sell. . . We spend every day thinking about new ways to spread our story. Blake Mycoskie--Start Something That Matters, Find Your Story, Chapter 2

Jack Bogle: In Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life, I warn of too much cost and not enough value; too much speculation and not enough investment; too much complexity and not enough simplicity; too much counting and not enough trust; too much salesmanship and not enough stewardship; and so on; even too many 21st century values and not enough 18th century values.those values exemplified by the great philosophers of The Age of Reason.men such as Rousseau and Hume and Burke, and Adam Smith, and Tom Paine, who in turn helped shape the minds of our Founding Fathers--especially Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Hamilton. And all of these men, in turn, stood on the shoulders of earlier giants such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. (Some of them are likely quoted in the halls you walk here each day. Read their words! Think about them! Gain their wisdom!) It is the values of these giants of Western Civilization that have inspired me.yes, as you well know, the dead teach the living (the motto on Roxbury Latin's crest is mortui vivos docent--the dead teach the living--to speak out on the ethical failings of so many of the leaders of our corporations and our money managers, our regulators and our legislators. What we refer to as Wall Street has become a casino, one in which enormous--but momentary--changes in short-term stock prices are treated as intrinsic reality, rather than ephemeral perception. Think about it. All of today's frenetic trading simply pits one speculator against another, with the only winners being the croupiers--the traders, the brokers, the investment bankers, and the money managers who facilitate those trades. If that undeniable reality reminds you of gambling in Las Vegas, or going to the race track, or hoping to hit the jackpot in the state lottery, well, you see where I'm coming from. The stock market casino has become a giant--and costly--distraction to the serious business of investing. Greed, recklessness, and self-interest ride in the saddle of today's capitalism. . . -- http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20090330.html

Henry David Thoreau: The student may read Homer or Aeschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. . . No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which be takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family. . . The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. --Henry David Thoreau in Walden (All the above passages, and far, far more, appear in Dr. E's book The Hero's Odyssey Entrepreneurship Code of Honor)

In Dr. E's class, we read the classical authors referred to by Tom, Joseph, Jack, and Henry David Thoreau above, and an added benefit, in this era of $200, classics-free textbooks and unprecedented student debt, is that all these epic works may be downloaded for free or purchased in quality-bound editions with scholarly notes and introductions from the world's leading experts--all "for a few dollars more." Too many students are graduating with too much debt these days--debt that shackles them to servitude right when they should be set free to follow their ideals and dreams and render them real in art and entreprneurship. Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel, the founder of Paypal and primary investor in Facebook, also laments the gutting of the classical, epic curriculum accompanied by skyrocketing tuitions:

Openmarket.org: "University administrators are the equivalent of subprime mortgage brokers," notes Facebook investor (and founder of Paypal) Peter Thiel, "selling you a story that you should go into debt massively, that it's not a consumption decision, it.s an investment decision. Actually, no, it's a bad consumption decision. . . Vast amounts of money are spent by American colleges on useless administrators and politically correct indoctrination. For many people, college no longer pays off as an investment.

Forbes.com: For a consummately educated guy, Peter Thiel (paypal founder) is derisive about American colleges and universities. In his view they've become too politically correct (he and David Sacks argued as much in their 1997 book, The Diversity Myth), hobbling the hard sciences as well as the humanities. Schools have created a classic bubble, says Thiel: Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student jumped 61% between 1993 and 2007, while the number of administrators per 100 students rose 39%, reports the Goldwater Institute. Student debt levels fill Thiel with disgust. "It is pretty much the only form of indentured servitude in the U.S.," he says. . http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0214/features-peter-thiel-social-media-life-after-facebook_5.html

1. Homer's Iliad
2. Homer's Odyssey
3. Exodus
4. Virgil's Aeneid
5. Socrates' Apology
6. The Book of Matthew
7. Plato's Repulic
8. Dante's Inferno
9. The Declaration of Independence
10. The Constitution
11. John Milton's Paradise Lost
12. Shakespeare's Hamlet
13. Newton's Principia
14. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments
15. The Stoics--Zeno, Diogenes, Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelis
16. Ludwig von Mises' A Theory of Money and Credit
17. F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom
18. Herman Melville's Moby Dick
19. Einstein's The Meaning of Relativity
21. Jack Bogle's The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, which we have traditionally read alongside Homer's Odyssey at the beginning of every class.
20. Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces
21. Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Odyssey
22. Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start

The transcendant power of Hero's Odyssey Mythology unites a diverse array of endeavors about a common, ideals-based foundation. In studying epic mythology, we are studying the fundamentals of art, law, story, business, poetry, marketing, and branding; we are studying those greater investments which alone endure over time--those overarching ideals and "codes of honor" that make us renaissance men (and women) "skilled in all ways of contending," as Homer described Odysseus; we are studying honor, Arete, virtue, and excellence--the very source of all enduring welath.

Consider the entrepreneur seeking to invest their art and life in the realm of filmmaking-- although screenwriting, forming/ incorporating/ branding a production company, recruiting a cast and crew, securing intellectual property, shooting the film, getting it to market, and publicizing the film are disparate tasks, each chapter is yet united in theme, via the hero's odyssey monomyth. While the technological details (the body) will change, the grander story (the soul) throughout all realms of noble human endeavor remains essentially the same, and thus all ventures may be exalted by the classical ideals found within the "Hero's Odyssey Code of Honor." Thus a most efficient, transcendant, enduring, and all-encompassing education consists not of going into vast debt for a classics-free BA, MBA, JD, & MFA, but in reading the Great Myths--all of which can be downloaded for free or purchased for a few dollars--all of which are exalted in my classes, books, and festivals, from Homer on down.

"Story is the soul of a work," and as story is the unifying theme while the soul is immortal, those who wish to create unified, lasting ventures must begin and end by honoring the soul--that force that presents the ideals and dreams successful entrepreneurs render real via rugged, relentless action, in the humble service of their peers.

As a testament to the overarching ubiquity of mythology in business and art alike, the The Hero's Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival has hosted both creators of the world's largest financial institutions and movie studios, alongside economists researching the parallels of the heoric monomyth and entrepreneurship. Dr. E's "hero's odyssey" syllabus/outline, conceived of in a class devoted to entrepreneurship, was picked up on the #1 screenwrting blog:

Go Into the Story: The Web's #1 Screenwriting Blog: The Hero's Odyssey as entrepreneurial model? GITS reader and long-time friend Richard Rumble sourced this interesting site that uses Joseph Campbell's theories re The Hero's Odyssey as the basis for teaching entrepreneurship. At first, that might leave you scratching your head, but check out this outline from the website: Artistic Entrepreneurship 101 Outline: (Based on Chris Vogler's The Writer's Story, the classic plot sturctures of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Inferno, and Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces) # 1 Structure (based on wikipedia's monomyth): The executive summary of your artistic business venture.

Dr. E's The Hero's Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology * 1.1 Departure (or Separation): Taking that first step--blog your vision. o 1.1.1 The Call to Adventure: Artistic passions & dreams o 1.1.2 Refusal of the Call: Is it practical? o 1.1.3 Supernatural Aid: Use the force, Luke. The harder you work, the luckier you get. o 1.1.4 The Crossing of the First Threshold: Business structures / market research o 1.1.5 The Belly of the Whale: The business plan, raising funds, intellectual property * 1.2 Initiation: Building the team, incorporating o 1.2.1 The Road of Trials: Striving toward profitablitity o 1.2.2 The Meeting with the Goddess: First customers! Early success! o 1.2.3 Temptation: Seeking short-term profits over long-term wealth. o 1.2.4 Atonement with the Father: Competing or collaborating with the big guys--the Microsofts and Apples, the Hollywood studios o 1.2.5 Realizing the core business Apotheosis o 1.2.6 The Ultimate Boon: Newfound business acumen! * 1.3 Return: It is all for naught without the road back! o 1.3.1 Refusal of the Return: Don't lose site of the core business! o 1.3.2 The Magic Flight: Exit strategy! IPO or selling the company! o 1.3.3 Rescue from Without: When business competition is your best friend. o 1.3.4 The Crossing of the Return Threshold: The venture is a success! o 1.3.5 Master of Two Worlds: You know what it takes--like Richard Branson you can do it again. o 1.3.6 Freedom to Live: Financial freedom to pursue your dreams!!

"With my students, I make the point that when we conceive of a story, in effect we become a Protagonist in our own story: The writing process. Stumbling upon that initial story concept is like The Call To Adventure. When we type FADE IN, we Cross The First Threshold. As we write, we confront Trials (lose our way, lose our confidence) and Temptations (to quit). And eventually as we get to FADE OUT, we emerge 'victorious' on our own hero's odyssey. Given that, I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find outfits like this using Campbell's theories as business models." --Go Into the Story: The Web's #1 Screenwriting Blog

Every entrepreneurial odyssey follows the Joycean Monomyth's epic themes, from "the call to adventure (seeing the opportunity)," to "the refusal of the call (it would be too risky)", to "meeting the mentor (finding inspiration from Branson/ Jobs/ Bogle/ Achilles/ Odysseus/ Aeneas--those who have gone before)," to "crossing the threshold (Zuckerberg/ Jobs/ Gates dropping out of college)," to "the road of trials (raising funding/ securing IP/ forming the fellowship)," to "the death (Jobs being fired from Apple/ Bogle being fired from the Wellington Fund/ Dante being exiled from Florence/ Aeneas losing it all in the fall of Troy), to "the resurrection (Jobs returning and reviving Apple/ Bogle launching Vanguard/ Dante penning The Divine Comedy in exile/ Aeneas founding Rome), to "the odyssey home (getting products to market--real artists ship!)" with the "ultimate boon (iphone/ ipad/ itunes / Vanguard index fund/ facebook)," and perhaps the greatest reward of all--the elixir of life-enhancing, newfound knowledge and wisdom. Yes--those more heroic entrepreneurs have ever been those who served the higher ideals over the bottom line.

For how "rich" would the world be without science, art, and epic poetry? Without quantum mechanics there would be no computers and thus no twitter nor droid phones nor videogames; without art, philosophy, and epic poetry there would be no liberty, for both Jefferson--liberty's modern poet--and Socrates--the founding grandfather of philosophy and science, referenced Homer as the prime mover. "Poetry is science's true father," stated Goethe, and Jefferson wrote, "as we advance in life, they all fall off, one by one, until we are left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone." And Socrates, in choosing death over dishonor while standing for Truth over politics before the Athenian jury, cited the courage of Achilles in Homer's Iliad, stating that he would never desist from teaching entrepreneurship's fundamental precept, that "virtue does not come from money, but money and every lasting good of man derives from virtue," even if he had to die many times. I shared this passage from Socrates' Apology, which all my classes read to witness how the Homeric hero was internalized as the action was transformed from external odysseys to the higher "battle for the soul"--I shared it with Jack Bogle, and you'll find in his book Enough. Steven Jobs and Sir Richard Branson also agree with Socrates--Jobs stated, "You know, our friends up north (Microsoft) spend over $5 billion a year on R&D and yet these days all they seem to do is try to copy Google and Apple. I guess it's a good example of how money isn't everything," and Sir Richard echoing, "Entrepreneurship isn't about capital; it's about ideas." And so it is that we open a class concerning business, economics, and entrepreneurship by reading Homer alongside Bogle's The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, for ultimately all these entities are not about the bottom line, but the higher ideals. As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, "If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values - that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control."

The power of mythology is that it teaches us of the rewards of character and honor--of living for our ideals and dreams while serving our peers. During his keynote at the Hero's Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival, Jack Bogle stated:

But even as I disclaim the credentials of the hero, of the leader, of the business manager, and even of the entrepreneur, I shamelessly proclaim my credentials as an idealist. Even more, I am an idealist who revels in the values of the Enlightenment and holds high his admiration for the brilliance and the character of the great thinkers, great doers, and great adventurers of the 18th century, men (as it happens, in particular our nation's Founding Fathers) who give birth to our modern world. I confess to being immensely proud of the title of one of the chapters of a biography of me that was published a decade ago: The 18th Century Man