Beds Build Weak Men. Mick Hunt Builds Leaders

22:31Yeah, dude. That's just something that I always think about. And I'm like, you know, the thing that holds people back is the thing that you think about the most. And it's not ever independent. It all works together. Absolutely. You know, I always say, keep your side of the street clean, man. You know, if you can clean that side of the street up, man, you, yeah, you'll be looking pretty good, dude. You know what I'm saying? Yes, sir.

22:52Mick Hunt:Yes, sir. Let's transition a little bit. Um, you know, you've been involved in, in many companies scaling them. I believe you your whole career was in insurance, correct? You're doing a lot of. Yeah. Insurances and then you're doing a bunch of keynote speaking and you're an executive coach and you're you're leading entrepreneurs and personal brands to make massive movement in their in their checkbook. So talk to us about that. Yeah, man. So I'm going to go back to to my because. Right. So my because was to change my mother's life. I was 10 years old and I'm sitting on the bed and my mom's crying and I knew what those tears meant.

23:35Mick Hunt:I knew what those sobs meant. You know, I could literally go back to every day of life for the first 10 years. I witnessed my mom go through some type of abuse from my father, sometimes physical, a lot of times emotional, sometimes financial. And it got to a point to where for the first time I could feel hurt. And I don't know if anyone's ever had that moment where for the first time you felt pain that wasn't yours. That was life changing. Yeah. Like that was life changing. And I said, I don't want you to feel like because if I feel this, I can only imagine what you feel. And I didn't want her to feel that anymore.

24:15So I made a promise that I was going to not make that normal.

24:19Mick Hunt:And I was 10. I knew there was nothing I was going to do at 10, 11, 12 or 13 that was going to make that go away. But I promised that one day it would. And so I knew that I needed to be the best. athlete, the best student, the best whatever to get the opportunity to make that happen. And so my life changed again when I was 16 and I was sitting at a doctor's office and I'm reading a hip hop magazine and I see Damon John's picture and face there. And I was like, wait, he's not an actor. He's not a rapper. He's not an entertainer. Like he's a businessman. And I said, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be a business person.

24:59Mick Hunt:And so I go to college, University of North Carolina, and the first job I got out of school was in insurance. And I haven't looked back ever since. But what I realized was there's a way to impact lives. And so, you know, the first five years I'm helping someone build their dream, you know, and then I said, I want to build this dream for myself. And so at 27, the entrepreneur spirit hit me and I've never looked back. And so, you know, started my own insurance agency, grew that to, you know, a value of over 17, 16, 17 million. Jesus. Sold it, headed up another company, grew that value from 50 million to 70 million.

25:37Mick Hunt:And then I said, I want to help other businesses and people understand that scale and growth isn't as challenging as we think. It's not easy. Like anyone that tells you that becoming a millionaire, becoming a nine, 10 figure person is easy or business is easy, they're lying to you. There's a lot of work. There's a lot of change that has to happen. But it's not as dramatic as you think. And so I just started that that process of helping people get wins, helping culture become better, helping leaders become better leaders. And so that's how that journey started, man. It really was going back to a promise I made my mom.

26:16Mick Hunt:And I realized the best way to do that was to be a business person, a business leader versus trying to be someone who just showed up. And I know that sounds very vain and I don't mean it in the sense of just showing up, but that's how I categorize things at that time, right? You either own something or you showed up for someone who owned it. And I wanted to be the person that owned. you know i'm listening to this and and and thank you for that um you know it's the thing that i'm getting from your story and and a lot of people talk about scaling i mean how we we are in a cesspool of social media and everybody's talking about i could scale your company and this this and that but you look at the resume they haven't fucking done shit like they haven't done anything right they look at you you respected the stages my good friend you know uh et eric thomas right he did a talk in the middle of well the beginning of june and he was talking about that's a good story he's on stage and everything that eric thomas does is a sermon and it's really cool man it's just it's dope man but he gets on the stage like everybody in this audience wants to be the speaker you want to be on the stage but you're not respecting the stages yep follow me the process you respected the process you had a because right you you became an empath at one point and felt your mom's pain you knew that you had to be the best athlete and the best student to get the opportunities to go to unc chapel hill and then you saw the the the magazine of damon johns like oh i can be a businessman and then you started in something you built someone's dream for five years and then you went off and did your own and you scaled it to 17 million and the next company from 20 to 50 million.

28:00You had evidence, you had the tools and you did those things. And so it made sense when you decided to break off on your own and help other entrepreneurs, you had that resume. How important has that experience been in delivering your message to these potential entrepreneurs that you're going to help?

28:17Mick Hunt:So I go back to a saying that Les Brown first gave me when he became my mentor. He said, Mick, you know, society tells you that experience is the best teacher. Well, if you're experienced losing, right, is that really a good teacher? Wisdom is the best teacher. And so when I help entrepreneurs and why that's important for me is I have wisdoms in the things that I know. I am never going to teach things, talk about things, help people in areas that I can't help. I'm not a do it all for you kind of person. And again, when you see those people or those entities, you should run the other way. Right.

28:57Mick Hunt:But what I do have is a blueprint. What I do have is a story. What you can do is Google the things that I have done. And those are the things that I help people with. Right. You know, if you are an entrepreneur and you're trying to go from a million to 10 million, I can show you the path to get there. If you're trying to grow a podcast and it's like, hey, I'm starting from nothing. I can I can definitely tell you and show you how to get there because I have wisdom in those things. I have connections. I have people that if I don't know the answer, I know who to reach out to on certain things. And so for me, it's about having the wisdom to help people, not just experience and trying different things.

29:37Mick Hunt:Like I could beta test a whole bunch of stuff. Sean, in our industry, we beta test a lot. We do. Daily, bro. Daily. And it ain't cheap either, bro. No. And we don't usually have everything figured out. But the wisdom of what doesn't work is what we can help you with. The wisdom of, hey, you need to do Riverside because you're going to try all the other platforms. Riverside is going to be solid and it's always going to be dependable as glitches, but you can live with the glitches that they have versus the other platforms. Right. It's that type of knowledge and wisdom that not just me, Sean, but you also that we're able to impart in people in different facets of business or life because we have the wisdom to me.

30:21Mick Hunt:That's it. Yeah, man. We know the potholes, right? I mean, when it comes down to podcasting, I can tell you down to a T what it's going to look like if you choose one path. if you decide on another one i go okay that's a better path because of xyz the problem that i find is a lot of people are assholes right you know and those are the people that want it for free right they go hey how can i grow my show you connect them with people and you're looking at this group message and they're ghosting the person it's like man you asked for help i'm trying to help you and you know you're not responsive and so it means to tell me you're not ready or they want it tomorrow and again that thing of dude there's there's millions of podcasts right there's hundreds of thousands right there's hundreds of thousands of folks that podcast that don't make money even when they're trying it took me six months to make the first dollar for my podcast, right?

31:20Mick Hunt:And again, Sean and I are just using podcasting as an example, but take your business and same thing. Success doesn't happen overnight, but it does leave clues. And you just have to be willing to play those clues out because things take time. There's no such thing as a get rich quick in most businesses and most professions. And again, Sean and I are gonna keep saying it. When people tell you that, run and turn the other way because it's just a money pit for you. Things just take time, right? Like Sean, I want to lose another 30 pounds. I can't do that in two weeks, bro. No, you can't. You can't, bro.

31:58Mick Hunt:It's impossible. And if there were a way that I could, I would be skeptical and scared. But for whatever reason in business, and I'm not saying everybody, but a lot of folks want that instant gratification because social media is giving that to us, right? But business and personal development just doesn't happen overnight. It's a lot of work that goes into it, but consistency pays off. And at some point the results do happen. It is crazy. Cause you say six months. Do you know how long it took me to monetize my show? How long? Four years. Wow. But, but also to me, like, look, I mean, there's a reason for that, right?

32:35Like I wasn't who I am now. I have a ton of growth to do. I don't want anybody to think that. I think I haven't figured out because I don't, I'm a hot mess 24 seven and a lot of different areas. Right. But, but for me, you know, it came at the right time. It's like, you know, you stumble into things like you can call it on accident, but it's really not on accident. And it finally took me until December of 2024 to truly monetize. Right. And man, it is what it actually, no, we were getting sponsorships, you know, in the beginning of, I'm going to say June of 2024, but it wasn't anything significant.

33:12It was always like, where's the next dollar coming from right now? We know to a T based on a formula, how many impressions we get, you know, like as far as like how much money we spend on marketing? What are the impression amount? I know if I get 626 ,000 downloads in a month, I'm probably getting 2.2, 2.3 million, you know, impressions. Now, if I get that to a million, how many more am I getting? I'm probably at, you know, a good 4 million impressions. What's that bring? But it's gotten down to a science now that I know if I spend$1 ,000 here, I'm going to yield$7 ,000 to$8 ,000 net. But I figured out that formula and it took forever to do.

33:48But but for me, man, like, dude, kudos to you for being able to monetize after six months, because for me, it was just a painful experience. But it built me, man. It built me. And then now I know what it takes.

34:01Mick Hunt:no absolutely man and and i would say for me it was i'm not gonna say i had a goal to monetize i didn't have a goal to monetize but when i found out that people made money in podcasting outside of the names joe rogan and mel robbins i thought everybody else just did it for the fun of it when i found out people made money i was like oh well i might want to do that too and so then for me it just became a thing of again it's going to be its own llc for me i've got employees under my podcast umbrella that I have to make sure that they live comfortably and wonderfully every day. And so in order to do that, I had to have a plan to make money.

34:42Well, that right there too, that's a great point, Mick. And thank you for pointing that out because the people that are there for your support, right? All mine are subcontractors, right? You know, right now for production to PR to everything. But when we have actual employees doing the backend things, because eventually I'm going to, I want an assistant. I want that assistant to feel comfortable and excited to go to work every day and to bust his or her ass for me because they know they are being compensated fairly. And that's important because at that point now we're talking about building culture within a company, dude.

35:14Mick Hunt:Right. Absolutely. You know what I'm saying? Like that, that's important. Yes, sir. I mean, and that's the way it has to be. I teach and preach modern leadership and that's one of the pillars, right? Like your culture is not what you say, it's what you feel, right? Like your culture is what runs your business. I tell CEOs all the time, you don't run a business, you run the culture. Your culture runs the business. Your culture is what is said for you when you never have to say a word. And as a CEO, there's two things you should always be working on. The vision of the company and the culture of the company and nothing else, because those are hard jobs, right?

35:52Mick Hunt:Like those are full-time responsibilities. So for anyone that's watching or that's listening, that is the CEO of a business or you're an entrepreneur or you're a solopreneur. And it's like, what are the things I need to be doing next vision and culture should always be your focus. Remember I'm two things at a time, kind of guy, vision and culture. That's it. It's a great point, man, because I look at myself as a visionary dude, you know, and now I have a team that helps me implement these things because I can't do it all. And I don't understand how to do it all. But the thing about culture, man, it's super important because nothing drives me more crazy than because people listening, if they're in, you know, a Fortune 500 company, the culture that the leadership is stating on sales calls and even the sales conferences can be completely contradictory to how the people feel.

36:42right some people perform out of fear and then the corporation's going well man they must be really happy that's not necessarily the case they could be having a very underlying toxic culture that is fueling production but they're going to lose those performers very very quickly for another company that states they have a better culture it's about feel i agree with that 100

37:04Mick Hunt:yes sir good stuff brother yeah man good stuff so what else is next for you dude what are you working on? Man, so I have a book that comes out September 23rd, How to Be a Good Leader When You've Never Had One. So excited about that. We've sold a ton of pre-orders right now. So that's going really, really well. I'm continuing to do my Lead Loud series, so leadership events and summit. So I like to do, they're one day, but they're really like three-quarter day, right? So it's, you know, you're listening to some really great experts. In August, I have Chris Voss coming down. Oh, nice. Damon Johns coming down.

37:45Mick Hunt:I say coming down, but coming up. Les Brown's coming back again. I'm in November. I'm doing some things with Robert Irvine. So really just getting the world focused on leadership. We talk about these all in-person events. These are all in person. Yeah. Cool. I need to swing in for one, dude. Let's go. I'll have you. Okay. We'll chat. We'll chat afterwards. Um, are the, where are the, where are they out of? Are you just, you go around the country or you stay stationary with your events in one place? Yeah. So I try to do them selfishly in Greenville, South Carolina. That's my hometown. Oh, cool.

38:21Mick Hunt:To, to, to bring awareness and to bring people like the last event we did in June, we had 200 people, 65 % of them were from out of the state of South Carolina. So like people are flying in because it's really about enhancing your leadership, enhancing your leadership brand, your leadership authority. And so I wanted to selfishly do it in Greenville because it's my hometown. And then also I don't have to fly as much. I can I can be husband. I can be husband and dad when I'm at home more. Isn't that special? Yeah, man. That's a hard balance, right? Oh, it totally is. I mean, as much as I try, like I'm still on the road speaking or with clients or corporations 180 to 200 days a year.

39:09Mick Hunt:Right. Which is a lot, which is a lot. And so I want to make sure that I can be the person that I speak about, too. Right. I have to be present. And so I want to make sure that I'm present for family, for friends and for my people. I love that, man. Cause it's not just about being a leader in your business, about being a leader at home. Right. I mean, come on, man. I mean, you know, families need their daddies, dude. And there's too much of a narrative going around. Like, I don't need no man. I don't need my dad. You know, like I wholeheartedly disagree. We need everybody we can. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm right there with you, man.

39:47Mick Hunt:Like, again, just going to how I was raised in a two parent household. And as much as I say, my dad was a butthole, like he still was there. You know what I mean? Like he might have been a butthole, but when I needed to have a conversation, I could go have that conversation. conversation. And that matters, right? That matters in your business. But like you said, Sean, that also matters at home. And so are you present to have conversations? Are you the person that you think you are in the eyes of your children, right? Or in the eyes of your spouse, right? Like, are you looking at things from everyone else's viewpoint to be the best version of yourself that you can be?

40:29That's a hard one because I always test myself, dude. you know i mean i always think of this i always think like i just want to be the dad that my kids think i am yeah you know maybe i am if they think that right but there's many checkpoints throughout the day where you know i i lack in patience you know um even even towards my wife i mean i think that's a normal human emotion at times where if you're so bogged down with other things and you You know, this business never stops moving. And you know that. Like, it's so hard to stay present in certain times because your phone never stops. Like, if you're truly busy and doing great things in this podcasting world, dude, you don't have a moment sometimes to breathe.

41:20How do you manage all that? Do you have certain blackout times? Because for me, that's difficult. Yeah.

41:27Mick Hunt:Yeah. So I'm a person that lives by my calendar during work hours and I'm going to use air quotes work hours. So like I have on my calendar, hey, this is time to catch up on social or this is time to check email. So I don't I don't leave my email box open 24 seven. I don't have my text available to disturb me 24 seven. But I have moments on my calendar that I do that because if not, I'm going to be distracted and nothing ever gets done. And after work hours, man, like the first thing I do every day is give my wife a big kiss and a hug because I need to make sure, again, I'm present. So I'll have moments where every day we're outside or we're on the porch or we're doing something together so that I can make sure she knows how important she is and she's getting the attention that I know she wants and needs.

42:17Mick Hunt:Not assume, but know that she wants and needs. And then I'll have, you know, 20 minutes while we're making dinner or right after dinner that I'll check emails or social because you're right. Like our we get hit up all the time and then I'll make sure I give wifey another hour, hour and a half of whatever it is we want to do. Sometimes it's just listening to music and just chatting. Right. And then before bed, I'll make sure I check email or I'll check, I don't really check email, but I'll check social to make sure I haven't missed anything or get my world updates. That's what's up. Careful on that one, right?

42:52Mick Hunt:I purposely, I put intention behind making sure I'm present, bro. Yeah, man. That's dope. So what I try to do is when the kids get home, right, I will carve out, you know, like 4 p.m. to 7.30 or 8. I need to do better at it. I think I need to hide my phone for those four hours so I can completely be present. But those are the times right there for me that I do my best to disconnect as much as humanly possible. Sometimes there's things that, you know, are like emergencies, like, you know, a big interview. And, hey, can you do this tomorrow that I have to be responsive to? Because, again, I also feed the family from the performance of this show.

43:36So I do have to give that some latitude as well. But yeah, for the most part, man, I really try for those three and a half, four hours to leave that for the family. I cook dinner every night. And then when the kids go down, you know, you know, my wife's a teacher. So she's starting on this path where, you know, it's about to be back in session. So she's working at night. So we'll be in bed and she'll work and I'll work a little bit, get some stuff done. And then we'll watch some TV together. So, you know, I do my best, but I would like to do more things one on one with my wife. But my damn kids are so little.

44:10They don't let that shit happen.

44:13Mick Hunt:You know, unfortunately, for the most part, I mean, not for the most part, my kids are out of the house. They're all one is in grad school. The other two are grown and have have good paying jobs or they're off daddy's payroll. I'll say it. There you go, baby. They're off daddy's payroll. But not man. Like, again, you're right. It's just being intentional at the end of the day. It's about being intentional. And I know this isn't you, Sean, but I will say for the listener, the viewer that's easily distracted by their phone after hours and their their own social have two devices, have your social device and then your your actual phone so if someone does need you you don't have to turn your phone off but have your social media device like everybody has an old phone like go use that and that be your deal oh dude i never even thought of that yeah you know and and fellas that's not an excuse to have a burner phone okay no this is not what mick is talking about all right guys that's a little humor it's a little humor yes yeah see i'm not distracted so i don't need it.

45:13Mick Hunt:But I do have folks that men and women, and that's what they do. But it's like, again, it's just right there. It's just your social media, your social media phone. That's a good point, man. Damn. I'm gonna have to work on that. That'd be cool. Yeah. It'd be cool. Look, man, as we land the plane here, I've got one more big question for you. You know, this is the determined society. So what is your definition of determination? Wow. Determination for me, bro. And, you know, I love your podcast. So I've been prepared for this question. Determination for me is not giving up on the success that you're supposed to have.

45:50Right.

45:51Mick Hunt:If you'd ask me, Sean, what's the one thing I fear? And I don't fear anything except this one thing. when when my life is over and whatever you believe but whenever that next thing that i'm supposed to see i don't want to see the person i was supposed to have been and so for me that's determination dude i'm gonna go through success so that when that time comes that person that i'm supposed to see is the person that i am bro you know that's my worst fear too right i don't know if you know that, but that is, that's why I had such a reaction. I'm like, dude, that is, you can ask anybody. My fear is that I get to heaven's gates and I don't recognize the person that Jesus introduces me to as myself.

46:37This is who I had envisioned. This is what you were capable of becoming. You didn't do it. That to me is the ultimate judgment. I can't because the other thing, man as we go through life and as we get older and maybe get sick like you want to be able to sit there and say like i did this man like i i the only thing i have to worry about is that my kids are ready to be without me yeah or my wife yeah you know what i'm saying dude like but man like that that has me stuck on stupid bro because no one has ever answered that question

47:14Mick Hunt:the same as me that's wild bro nobody well we are brothers from another mother so we might be bro That's my B, bro. For sure, dude. Like I just, I've enjoyed this conversation, man. It was very insightful. There was a lot of value given to the listener, to the viewer. And I'm not freaking surprised. That's why I had you on the show, man. And, you know, I just had a blast with you, bro. Same, man. Same. We got to do more together, dude. We got to figure out how we can really collaborate together, man, and do some amazing things outside of podcasting potentially. I'm ready. cool man cool well thanks again my brother and to the audience man share this show with someone you know love and trust and understand you know sometimes you just got to change your damn bed get rid of your limiting beliefs your excuses and go make some good decisions guys and until next time stay determined next up is a little song from carmax about selling a car your way you want to sell those wheels you wanna get a car max instant offer so fast wanna take a sec to think about it or like a month wanna keep tabs on that instant offer with offer watch wanna have car max pick it up from your driveway so wanna drive car max pick up not available everywhere restrictions and fee may apply