John Marsh's Redemptification
BEHIND THE MIC SERIES #4 | An Opelika, Alabama Developer aligns personal and professional rebirth
In this series, I’ll be reflecting on some of my favorite conversations from Seasons 1 and 2 of The Townbuilder’s Podcast, which I had the pleasure of hosting. Throughout these seasons, I engaged in in-depth conversations with nearly two dozen new town developers and designers. With the podcast set to relaunch in 2025 under the new host Levi Wintz, I wanted to revisit these meaningful episodes, sharing my favorite discussions along with some fresh reflections.
I broke down my reflections on Episode 111 of Townbuilders into two posts just because The Minute pre-roll monologue and the actual talk were unrelated. I posted on The Minute last month.
The primary podcast guest was the prodigious and eccentric John Marsh. John is the host of the Redemptification Podcast, Founder of Marsh Collective, and serial entrepreneur with a love for building things that are beautiful and meaningful.
I talk a lot about new-town developers, which is the primary focus of the National Townbuilder’s Association that produced the podcast. But John is a successful OLD-town developer, focusing intently on Opelika, Alabama, where he has spent 30 years redeveloping. As he describes the grind of such work, “slowly but slowly, we have become an overnight success.”
In New Urbanism, we have Town Founders—they’re the developers who work tirelessly and obsessively, often for 10-30 years, to develop one single place. More than a job or even a career, it’s a life, which is why Town Founders are so rare. Few people are capable of commitment, at that scale, for that long.
John is an even rarer bread of Town Founder; he is a Town Saver. Town Saving might sound hyperbolic (and in fairness, John would resist the description), but I find it apropos given his very public personal history of recovery from drug addiction, marital failures, and subsequent traumas. It’s best heard via this 9-minute tear-jerking video.
In the podcast, I ask John, “What does it take to restore a city while restoring yourself?” His response: “We have started over 40 businesses. It’s incremental. It’s intention. It’s devoting 30 years of your life to 10 square blocks.”
“There is hope for broken things.”
Recovering from such lows requires more than any technical know-how or support. It takes something more to move people. To save oneself from the ledge. It’s spiritual, and it’s story.
John is one of the best people I know at understanding the value of story. For those of us fighting the tidal wave of machine development, “story” is critical.
My favorite exchange in the podcast is where we unpack Steve Jobs’ famous quote on storytelling: “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values, and agenda of an entire generation that is to come… and Disney has a monopoly on the storyteller business.”
The final sentence of Jobs’ quote is typically left off, but it’s the most important: “You know what? I am tired of that bullshit; I am going to be the next storyteller.”
The quote was from 1994. Pixar would release its first feature-length film—Toy Story—in 1995.
John is a storyteller. He is also the most entertaining voice in New Urbanism. Part preacher, part teacher, and part stand-up comic, his calling card is that he speaks in alliterations and analogies. I’ve recently taken to quantifying these habits whenever he speaks (wait til you hear it yourself).
I hope you enjoy the talk as much as I enjoyed recording it.
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