Marc Hunter: iAmGreatness

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Now let's jump into the episode.

All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Mark Hunter with us. He is the founder and CEO of I Am Greatness, LLC. He is a motivational speaker, US Army veteran, blogger, author, and humanitarian who currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland. So welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks a lot, Tyler, for having me.

Of course, man. Grateful to have you on. Let's jump right into the first one, Mark. The first one I have for you is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

I thought long and hard about this one, but there's a lot of stories that I have, but one of the best with an underlying message would be my first ever fight. I was about 7 or 8 years old, and right across the street from my grandmother's house, there was a playground. And one day I go over there with my cousins, and there was a guy about maybe 10 or 11 years old, and he had boxing gloves. So he picked one of us out of the crowd, choosing me being the smallest person there. And we ended up putting on the gloves and started fighting. But at the end, he's throwing a bunch of punches at me. I didn't know what to do. I just was covering my face. So what I did was I knew I had to throw at least one punch. So I wound up my fist, threw one good one, hit him right on the nose. And immediately he said, "Stop, stop, stop. Enough, enough, I quit." So after that, I realized that, you know, even when it doesn't seem like things are going your way, all you gotta have is that one punch. You gotta land that one punch, and that could be just that one idea, and you can win no matter what life is throwing at you in the end.

And what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

I would say I practice something called real optimism, and I put that into all of my motivation. And the important part about it is it's always important for us to be optimistic and believe that we can do extraordinary things, but it's equally important to be realistic in the attainment of those things. So the best way to describe that would be Lamborghinis. You know, we all know that Lamborghinis exist, But, you know, we know they are real, we can attain them. How can we get to being a Lamborghini owner? And that's where we need to be realistic. We need to break down the goals of ownership step by step.

And what is your best piece of overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?

Overall business advice would be you don't have to reinvent the wheel. You know, you just have to realign it. I actually talk about this a little bit in my book, The Greatness Manifesto. And if we think about some of the greats today, as far as business is concerned, like Elon Musk with Tesla and SpaceX, he's made billions of dollars off of old ideas and the ideas that people have just, you know, didn't see through to fruition. Then you have things like Uber and Lyft, which taxis have been around forever. These individuals just created a more convenient and modern twist to it. And the realistic portion of it is, if you feel like you have a $100 idea or a million-dollar idea, just go for it. You know, if you see gold, it probably is.

And then if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

To my younger self, do and try everything For the experience, when I was in the military, I was probably about 23 or 24 when I got this advice. I got it from my platoon sergeant. His name was Sergeant Rod. One day I was in his vehicle, we were driving to a location, and he asked me why I hadn't signed up to go to any military schools. By that point, I had become one of the top soldiers in our platoon, and I had turned everything down. My only goal was to pay off my college loans and to get out of the military. And at the end of the day, he told me that people get out of the Army and lie about all the things that they did. He said, you have a chance to do all of those things that most people lie about. So give it a shot. Even if you don't enjoy it, you'll have the experience and a great story to tell. So I've always taken that with me. And I wish if I could go back in time, I'd play every sport, and I'd go to every after-school club. Even if I didn't enjoy it, I'd just get the experience.

And kind of going a little bit down a different path, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

The key to happiness. I would say that the key to happiness and in general, the key to life is to be useful. And if you're not useful, you are useless. So my main goal in life would be to help others. Anywhere that I succeed, it's not important for me to only be— to be the only person that succeeds or to be number one. It's important for everybody to get there too. We don't need to be alone at the mountaintop. Everyone in the world can have a mansion.

And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

Best book I read is The Alchemist. And I give you two things from that book that I hold dearly. It's, this too shall pass and enjoy the moment regardless of the situation, whether it's good or bad, you know, eventually this will pass. And the second thing I learned is, Gold is not worth dying for. And I think that I take that in a different context than they talk about in the book, where I believe gold is not worth dying for is more about our pursuit of happiness, just like we talked about, our pursuit of our God-given purpose and not necessarily money. And it's not something that we should die for, essentially.

And what is your favorite quote and why?

Favorite quote? I actually have this tattooed on my arm. It says, "Greatness is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has overcome to reach his goals." And that's a quote from Dr. Dorothy Height. And what it means to me is, in the long run, our accomplishments mean absolutely nothing. What we did to get where you are today, that's where the lessons are. And lessons are the gold that we can share with others. So what did you do to overcome the situations that arose during that period of time that you were attempting to attain a goal. You know, I never want to be one of those people that talk about what they used to be or what they used to do. If you ever heard the saying, "Used to bees don't make no honey." So, I'm actually looking to tell people about the things that I've done and how it has, you know, reached me to the point that I am currently in my life. Awesome, man.

Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last one I have for you before we let you go is where is the best place for people to find and connect with you online?

Best ways to— best place to find me is you can go to IamGreatness.net. That's my personal blog. I have over 30 blog posts on there. You can learn a whole bunch about me through my stories. You can also follow me on Instagram and Twitter @TheGreatOne. That's T-H-E-G-R-A-T-E-Z-O-N-E. And you can email me at mark@iamgreatness.net. Mark is spelled with a C. And the first 5 people who email me from this podcast will receive a free book.

Awesome, man.

It's a special thing for you guys out there.

Awesome, dude. Thank you so much. We will talk with you soon.

Thank you. No problem. Thanks again for having me, Tyler.