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Parker McCumber is the owner of Rookery Studios, a podcast and video production studio in Orem, Utah that helps business owners build authority through consistent, high quality content. Rookery Studios handles podcast production, video production, and social media management, giving entrepreneurs and professionals a complete system for turning one recording session into content that works across every platform.
Rookery Studios is the natural extension of Parker’s work as a business coach. Through Mission Ready Systems and his flagship Commanders Club mastermind, Parker coaches business owners on leadership and team development, drawing on his military experience to teach systems that scale leadership, teams, and outcomes. The two go hand in hand. Coaching builds the leader and the team behind the business, and the studio builds the authority and audience in front of it.
Parker’s approach is grounded in over twelve years of service in the United States Army, with active duty assignments in Germany, Afghanistan, and Korea before transitioning to the Utah Army National Guard in 2016. He currently serves as a Captain in the field artillery, where he has led up to 100 soldiers and been responsible for 25 million dollars in assets. He studied business management at Utah Valley University, holds an MBA, and is currently working on a Doctorate of Business Administration with an emphasis in organizational leadership.
As an entrepreneur, Parker launched his first ecommerce company in 2016 and has since built multiple seven and eight figure businesses, generating over 75 million dollars in lifetime online sales. His work has earned ClickFunnels’ Two Comma Club and 2CCX awards along with Shopify’s 100,000 Orders award. He is the author of How the Hell Are You Doing This?, a book on life and leadership drawn from his military and business experience, and the host of the Based Business Podcast, recorded at Rookery Studios.
Outside of business, Parker serves on the Vineyard City Council and coaches football. He lives in Vineyard, Utah with his wife Emmeline and their kids.
What inspired you to build Rookery Studios?
Parker was inspired by seeing how business owners could use media to build authority and trust at scale. He believes that today’s entrepreneurs no longer need massive advertising budgets or traditional media companies to establish themselves as authorities. Through Rookery Studios, he helps business owners turn one recording session into valuable content that can reach audiences across multiple platforms.
His broader mission comes from his own experience of becoming the bottleneck in his businesses. The leadership systems he learned through the Army helped him realize that a business should not depend entirely on its owner. Today, he combines those leadership lessons with content creation to help entrepreneurs build both the team behind their business and the authority in front of it.
What challenges did you overcome at the beginning of your journey?
Parker’s journey began without financial advantages or a safety net. Growing up poor in rural Utah taught him early about the importance of creating a different future for his family.
His military career presented its own challenges, followed by the difficult transition back to civilian life. After leaving active duty, he worked a $10-an-hour warehouse job while attending college and spent two years building his first business without paying himself. His first business idea failed, forcing him to pivot and learn ecommerce, fulfillment, marketing, sales, and customer service along the way.
These experiences taught him that every setback can become an opportunity to learn and improve.
What is unique about your business?
What makes Parker’s work unique is that he focuses on installation rather than simply providing information. Instead of giving business owners another course or collection of tactics, he helps install leadership systems that allow teams to operate more independently.
Rookery Studios also complements his coaching business. Through coaching and the Commanders Club, Parker helps build the leader and team behind the company. Through Rookery Studios, he helps build the authority and audience in front of it.
His approach combines real-world military leadership experience, business ownership, coaching, and media production into one system.
Is there anything you would have done differently when starting?
Parker would tell his younger self to invest in himself earlier and find mentors faster.
When he started his first business, he spent years learning through trial and error because he wasn’t yet surrounded by people who had already solved the problems he was facing. Later, he invested heavily in coaching, masterminds, and mentorship and saw how much faster the right guidance could accelerate his growth.
His biggest lesson is that the entrepreneur is the investment. Business owners should actively seek out people who are ahead of them and be willing to learn from their experience.
What advice would you give to someone trying to become an entrepreneur?
Start with a clear mission and a plan, but understand that the plan will probably change.
Parker believes entrepreneurs should focus on continuous improvement rather than waiting for one huge breakthrough. Small actions taken consistently can compound into significant results over time.
He also encourages entrepreneurs to build systems and teams instead of trying to do everything themselves. Giving people clear intent and decision-making authority allows the business to grow beyond the founder.
What are the qualities of a good entrepreneur?
According to Parker, good entrepreneurs demonstrate ownership, disciplined initiative, honest self-assessment, continuous improvement, and humility.
They take responsibility for outcomes rather than blaming circumstances. They are willing to act without having perfect information, evaluate their performance honestly, and continually look for ways to improve.
Most importantly, they understand that they don’t need to have every answer. Great entrepreneurs surround themselves with capable people, ask for help, and build teams that complement their weaknesses.
How do you define success?
For Parker, success is simple: a mission accomplished and a family that gets him at full strength.
Success isn’t only about revenue or business growth. It’s about building a company that can operate on the judgment of the team instead of constantly depending on the owner.
His ideal measure of success is being able to finish work around 5 p.m. and go home to spend time with his family. Being present for his children and having dinner with them represents the real reason he built his businesses in the first place.
What’s your favorite book or podcast, and why?
Parker’s favorite book is Atlas Shrugged, which he values for its lessons about responsibility, competence, production, and building something excellent.
For podcasts, he enjoys The Joe Rogan Experience and Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson because they expose him to experts and perspectives from many different fields. He appreciates content that challenges his existing beliefs rather than simply confirming what he already thinks.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?
One of Parker’s most effective strategies is what he calls the Authority Engine: creating consistent long-form content and turning it into an ongoing presence across multiple platforms.
He records long-form podcast conversations, which his team then transforms into numerous shorter pieces of content for platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, and TikTok.
However, Parker learned an important lesson along the way: views aren’t the ultimate goal. The goal is to attract the right people and create meaningful conversations that lead to the right customers. Content should function as both a filter and a handshake, allowing potential clients to understand who you are and how you think before they ever get on a call.
TL;DR by McCumber
I believe business owners should stop trying to carry everything themselves and start building systems, teams, and leadership that allow the business to operate without them. My military experience taught me the power of clear intent, disciplined execution, and after-action reviews. Today, I use those lessons through coaching and Rookery Studios to help entrepreneurs build stronger teams, create authority, and ultimately get back the time and freedom they built their businesses to achieve.
