Episode 107
The Second Anniversary Show
September 22, 2017 · Mike Murphy
EP107: THE 2ND ANNIVERSARY SHOW Today is the second birthday and/or second anniversary of Mike Murphy Unplugged, so cheers to me and to you for listening week after week and for all the support. Episode Summary: Today is going to be a story-time episode about the origin of this podcast and a reflection of my first two years as a podcaster and how it has affected my business and life.
Episode Summary: A story-time episode marking two years of Mike Murphy Unplugged — the real origin story tracing back to a blog from the early 2000s, why podcasting turned out to be the right medium all along, and what two years of consistency actually changed.
What You’ll Learn
- The real origin story of Mike Murphy Unplugged, tracing back to a blog started in the early 2000s
- Why “Unplugged” and “Acoustic” as brand names both come from the same instinct: strip away complexity
- What Mike tried before podcasting — video production, branding, retouching — and why none of it stuck
- What two years of weekly podcasting actually changed about his skills and business
Birthday: the anniversary of a birth. Anniversary: the yearly recurrence and celebration of a past event. Today is both, for this show.
Launch date: Friday, September 25, 2015. New episodes every Friday at 12:15am. Subscribe on iTunes, and the podcast newsletter goes out every Friday at 6:00am.
Why Start This Podcast?
Today’s answer: to build a personal brand rooted in teaching people things that genuinely improve their lives or business. The original answer, from September 25, 2015: there was simply too much information built up to share, and a podcast was the right format to give it a shot.
Self-education has always been the throughline — 8+ years managing and designing for a photography studio meant learning accounting, business, sales, marketing, IT networking, data backups, servers, photography, lighting, video, graphic design, and the entire Adobe suite. A lot known about a little, and a long search for the “thing” underneath it all.
Flashback: The Acoustic Blog
Long before the podcast, there was Blogger and a site called The Acoustic Blog, started in the early 2000s. HTML, CSS, design, web color, typography, SEO, and Google AdSense were all self-taught in the process of writing about tech news (Apple vs. Microsoft), travel, culture, arts, design, and music.
Then the iPod arrived around 2004/2005, and podcasts followed immediately — every cool Silicon Valley tech blogger was making them (John C. Dvorak, Merlin Mann, Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte, the whole CNET lineup). The blog eventually stopped, but the podcast listening never did — photography, Photoshop, design, tech shows, absorbed for years.
What the Blog Has to Do With the Podcast
Everything, as it turns out. The names say it: The Acoustic Blog and Mike Murphy Unplugged. Music and audio have always been part of the identity — “acoustic” and “unplugged” both strip complexity away and make something easy to understand, visually and artistically. That’s exactly the teaching philosophy: take complicated tools and make them simple and approachable for other people.
The moral: don’t overthink it when you feel stuck. What’s happening today is functionally identical to what was happening 20 years ago — sharing interesting things, tips, and tricks that provide real value, even if the value is just making someone smile.
The Launch
MikeMurphy.co launched in 2015 without a clear specialty in mind. A string of ideas got tried on for size — video production, video editing, branding and design for businesses, Photoshop retouching — complete with owned domains and logos for each, but none of them felt right. Being a one-man band meant refusing to force a direction just because an online guru said it was the smart move.
In the summer of 2015, podcasting clicked as the right medium for an introvert carrying around a head full of tech and creative knowledge — the appeal of learning to record and edit audio from anywhere was immediate. Within 30 days, Mike Murphy Unplugged was live.
Conclusion
Two years in, the throughline is clear: learning new skills, creating content, and moving forward in business and life is the same reason The Acoustic Blog existed in the first place. The skills — video production, editing, audio, teaching — have grown exponentially through daily practice, and the mission hasn’t changed: create content that teaches and inspires, for as long as it takes, always with good intentions.
Happy 2nd anniversary to both host and listeners — thanks for taking the ride, and here’s to many more.