John Jantsch appears on Conversations with host Dan Skinner on Kansas Public Radio to discuss his latest book, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

Jantsch is a marketing expert who founded his own firm three decades ago. While he’s written five other books that serve as marketing how-tos, this book is instead a “why-to” not just for marketers, but entrepreneurs of any stripe.

Entrepreneurs need to be self-reliant: When you run your own business, you must trust yourself enough to stay true to your dream and not worry about what others say you must do. This is the essence of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Self-Reliance,” and it’s that essay (and the body of literature written by other transcendentalist authors of the 1800s) that serve as inspiration for Jantsch’s book. He sees the transcendentalists as leading the first counter-culture movement in the United States, and because he feels that spirit aligns so closely with the entrepreneurial journey, he’s used literature from that period as a jumping-off point for his daily devotional, The Self-Reliant Entrepreneur.

To learn more about the book, the transcendentalist works that inspired Jantsch, and his reasons for writing it, check out this episode of Conversations.

Listen: John Jantsch on Conversations on Kansas Public Radio