In this episode of Getting to Aha!, Darshan Mehta sits down with Tom Hunt, Founder and CEO of Fame, a top-five globally ranked B2B podcasting agency, to unpack how 15 failed ventures became the foundation for a $4.5M ARR success story. Tom shares why increasing your failure rate accelerates innovation, and how emotional mastery, not intelligence, is the real entrepreneurial edge. He explains why podcasting is B2B’s most underrated relationship engine, how trust compounds through empathy and communication, and why hiring for attitude beats hiring for perfection. Join us for a conversation that reframes rejection as data, relationships as leverage, and “failure” as the raw material of sustainable growth.

Tom Hunt is the Founder and CEO of Fame, a B2B podcasting agency that has scaled to $4.5M in annual recurring revenue, without external funding. With over seven years of experience in online marketing and a background in management consulting and chemistry, Tom has built Fame into one of the most successful global B2B podcast agencies, helping businesses achieve strategic growth by building brand awareness and pipeline impact.

Key Takeaways
👉 Double Your Failure Rate to Multiply Success – Tom argues that success scales with your willingness to fail more often. The real constraint isn’t intelligence but emotional resilience. Most leaders avoid experimentation because they fear the psychological cost of failure. By allocating structured budgets for testing new channels, products, and audiences, and treating setbacks as data, organizations build insight that competitors can never access. Twenty-five ventures later, Tom proved persistence compounds into breakthrough clarity.
👉 Podcasting as Relationship Leverage, Not Content Marketing – Podcasting’s true ROI isn’t downloads, it’s access. Tom reframes it as a credibility bridge to connect with high-value people who would otherwise remain unreachable. Strategic guest selection turns conversations into partnerships, collaborations, and pipeline opportunities. When leaders invite those they genuinely want to know, the podcast becomes relationship currency, accelerating trust and opening doors traditional networking rarely unlocks.
👉 Communication, Empathy, Trust: The Relationship Flywheel – Strong relationships are built on active listening, genuine empathy, and trust that forms over time. Trust isn’t a starting point; it’s an outcome. Leaders who communicate transparently and demonstrate understanding create deeper partnerships with customers, hires, and collaborators. When empathy replaces snap judgment, hidden potential surfaces and transactional interactions evolve into durable, growth-driving alliances.
👉 Start With 100% Trust to Reveal Character Faster – Entering relationships with full trust accelerates truth. Tom and Darshan argue that people mirror the trust they receive, making early generosity a powerful filter. Rather than cautiously withholding belief, give commitment upfront, observe behaviour, and then decide. This approach speeds up hiring and partnership decisions while replacing suspicion with evidence-based clarity.
👉 Marketing Is Perspective-Taking at Scale – Marketing works only when you understand what others want. Tom reduces the discipline to one core skill: stepping into the customer’s self-interest. Features don’t persuade—alignment does. By combining qualitative insight with behavioural data, leaders can shape offers that save time, reduce cost, or evoke emotion. Influence flows from empathy, not broadcasting.
👉 Make Life Time Value the Priority and Customer Acquisition Cost Will Follow – Obsessing over cheap acquisition often attracts the wrong customers. Tom and Darshan highlight the inverse relationship between customer lifetime value and acquisition cost: when you prioritise retention, onboarding, and customer success, referrals increase, and CAC naturally declines. Sustainable growth comes from acquiring the right customers and building loyalty-based moats that compound over time.

Listen Now!
Fame Host - https://bit.ly/3ACsRBz
Apple - https://apple.co/3gsuA31
Spotify - https://bit.ly/3MKeuVR
YouTube - https://bit.ly/3KYAHtd
RSS -  https://feeds.fame.so/getting-to-aha

Episode Resources:
Darshan Mehta on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/darshan--mehta
iResearch Website - https://iresearch.com
Tom Hunt on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhuntio/
Fame Website - https://www.fame.so/
Tom’s TEDxTalks guesting: youtube.com/watch?v=i3F08BnhhXM
Tom Hunt YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUNSAzH6sLW-Vrxfn-1BUrw