Mick Hunt is one of them.
“Everyone’s overcome something in their life, everyone’s had an obstacle. I don’t care how successful anyone is, and everyone’s version of success is their own version of success, but everyone’s going through something to get to that version,” Hunt tells Fortune.
“I realized I was helping build someone else’s dreams, and I felt like I have my own dreams and visions too, and I wanted to take the risk and do this for myself,” he says. “So I started my own agency from scratch, no mergers, no acquisitions, just really building the processes that I felt fit me.”
By the time he was 40, the gamble paid off: he sold two businesses worth nearly $100 million and pivoted to consulting, helping others do the same.
Podcasting was a next-step experiment—but executed with the same rigor: “I didn’t want to just have a hobby podcast, because time is our most valuable asset, and I don’t have time to just play around with the podcast,” he says. “I wanted to make sure that I put in the same principles of, okay, what are our metrics? How do we win?”
So, for those looking to hop on the wagon—and potentially emulate Hunt’s success—there’s good news: “Here’s the great thing about podcasting, everybody can do one,” Hunt says.
“You can start a podcast with your phone, literally you just need a recording device. And it doesn’t have to be completely buttoned up and polished. You can just get your message out there.”
But that doesn’t mean you can expect to find an audience immediately, he says. Even with a large professional network, it took Hunt months to get off the ground.
“Don’t try to shoot for the moon on day one,” Hunt says. “Make sure that you have a clearly defined message, and then just get 10 followers. Those 10 will then be 100 and then, before you know it, you’ve built a community.”
And while Hunt has long been an analytics man, he credits his differentiator to being authentic. At the close of every episode, Mick Unplugged drives home the reminder that has become his mantra:
“Your ‘because’ is your superpower.”
