The Second Anniversary Show

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 LearnThe real origin story of Mike Murphy Unplugged, tracing back to a blog started in the early 2000sWhy "Unplugged" and "Acoustic" as brand names both come from the same instinct: strip away complexityWhat Mike tried before podcasting — video production, branding, retouching — and why none of it stuckWhat two years of weekly podcasting actually changed about his skills and businessBirthday: 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 BlogLong 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 PodcastEverything, 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 wha…Read the complete show notes and resources on mikemurphy.ai.Support the showSubscribe To Weekly Newsletter:AI UnpluggedConnect With Me🌐 Website📧 Newsletter🎥 YouTube🐦 X💼 LinkedInComments, Questions & Feedback: [email protected]