The Exact Strategy for Modern Business Growth and Marketing That Actually Works l Mick Unplugged Podcast

0:00The more you're you, and I mean all the way. I've cursed twice Mick in this interview so far. It's not lost on me that 5 ,000 people just decided okay I'm not with Gary V because you grew up in the south you grew up with that kind of grandma. Like I respect that. But I have no other gear besides being me. And I grew up in Queens and New Jersey and cursing is every third word in our lives. Two people today in my office asked me how do I find my niche? Everything feels overcrowded. I'm like everything is overcrowded. I'm like the only niche you have is you. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience.

0:35Big topic. I'm just going to say the two words. Interest media. My man, you're listening. Because you and I are on the same vibe there. I've been telling people for the past six months, it's not social anymore. There's nothing social about anything you're doing on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or X, whatever they call it now. Like there's nothing social about that. Nope. It's interest. Yeah. It's interest meeting. You know, there is something social. The comments are still an incredible opportunity that people are missing out on Mick. Huge missed opportunity. In fact, watch this. I'm going to throw a right hook for you.

1:12Everybody. We take so many things for granted in life. If you love what Mick's done for you with this podcast, please take the time. It'll take three minutes. It would mean the world to me, but I know even more for him. please take three minutes right now and like close out or minimize or maybe at the end of this podcast don't forget and i know some of you forget so jot it down please go to spotify or apple and leave with preferably a five-star review if you love this podcast but look if you think mix at a four-star level give them the fourth make it true there might be a three-star person on here um please leave a review that's social mick right like if right now what i just did for you leads to a couple thousand people actually leaving a review on both of those platforms, it's going to make you get more listeners.

1:56So there is some things left social. If everyone who's listening here that wanted to grow actually replied to every comment on every Instagram post, you would grow a lot. So social still is out there. Now, what you and I are referring to, and what I've been yelling about for about three years, and I kind of like got this term down now because it makes it very easy to understand, is the algorithm doesn't work the same way. Social media for 15 years, as you know, I've said this a bunch, used to work like email marketing. Get as many followers as you can and a certain percentage of them will see it.

2:27Now, literally me and you are cooking, we're growing. There's somebody listening right now who's never posted once, but they own three dry cleaners. And you know what? They're like, you know, I wanna be like Mick and Gary too. And they're literally gonna be inspired by this little rant and they're about to make a video, literally. They're on their way to work right now. Literally, they're gonna make their first video telling the story of how they built these three dry cleaners. and they're gonna post it on TikTok. And it might get 90 views, but they might get a message that kind of gives them a little more juice.

2:54And their ninth video they make is gonna get 1 million views, lead to more business, and they're gonna be on their way to be us. And that excites me. And that's not how it was from 06 to call it 21. But that is how it is now. Followers are diminishing in your guarantee to get views and awareness. The content now is finding their audience. Let me give you a for instance. If I make a video, we talked about it, I think before, yeah, we didn't talk about spades here. We were talking about it before we went on. You and I are both passionate about spades. If I make a video right now about spades, okay?

3:30Like, I love spades. Like, I know how to sneak it in. You're never going to catch me. I know what to do. I've got hand signals with my partner. Like, we know what to do. If I did that in 2017 to the audience I had, it would be a low-performing piece of content because people are like, occasionally they want a little randomness for me, but they want their business stuff, their motivation stuff. Today, if I posted that on TikTok, especially, but more and more every other platform too, that is literally going to show up in the feeds of people who don't even know who I am that fuck with spades. Now, it's going to show up to 12 or 15 people.

4:07And if none of them react, that it'll probably die pretty quickly and it will low perform. But I made a video years ago that still gets brought up all the time of me talking about how much I love blueberries and that I can eat blueberries better than anyone. And that video got 5 million views at the time when most of my stuff was getting 500 ,000. And so that one just hit. And that goes back to you are the niche. That goes back to talk about what you love or you know. And that is the truth of interest media now. If you make content that is random, that is true and honest or passionate to you, it will find audience versus not.

4:44Now, again, don't get discouraged. Let's say someone got excited about what I just said, and they made a post tomorrow about Stratego the board game, and the following day about lasagna, and the next day about Run DMC, and all three did way worse than the stuff they normally do. I don't need a DM from y 'all saying, Gary V, you're wrong, you lost it, you're the worst. You just did three. If you do 100 of them, then I'm about that life. Then you can come and yell at me. But I have a funny feeling on your road to 100, something good's about to happen. Damn right. Damn right it is. Podcast Nation, before I get you into today's podcast, big announcement.

5:19As you probably heard at this point, because I had John from Stan on the show, I'm an investor advisor to an incredible startup called Stan, Stan.Store. I'm sending you right now to garyvee.com, garyvee.com slash Stan. Go check this out. We've done a Gary V. Stan Store challenge, which actually has a weekly call with me. This is built for everyone who's been affected, honestly by my overall content the tech stack all these features and the minimal costs per month that stand store has built is really the tool that was needed for this world that i envisioned when i wrote crush it when i wrote crushing it and this overall thing i'm thinking a lot about lately which is the individual empire right this this creator entrepreneur slash entrepreneur creator economy that I think is gonna eat up the oxygen, very honestly, the thing that so many of you want in your life and the reason so many of you are not there yet is you've got the strategy for me, you've got the ambition within yourself, but you don't have the tools for you to fully maximize it and I believe you can find that at Stan's store, stan.store, but specifically, I want you to sign up for it through my challenge because I wanna get access with you and plus there's a bunch of cool things, so if you wanna go see those cool things, go to garyvee.com slash stan, S-T-A-N, now to the podcast.

6:40You know, Gary, I tell all my friends, you personally are like my brother from another mother. About a month ago, we're on a live on whatnot, right? And a person, I'm not going to say their name, in the comments was trying to go for sympathy. And it went something like this. Gary, my company is ending remote work in the next nine months. I don't think this is a great place because we can continue to work from home. We are just ineligible for raises in order to get a raise. You're going to have to come back into the office. No, no, by the way, me, the company, just to add color, because I went crazy on this one, too.

7:23Yes. I'm glad you brought this up. The company is moving to Florida from wherever they were. Obviously, they're doing that because of the taxes and all the things happen. But also we're living in this A.I. world. The fact that this company said we're moving to Florida, but all of you get to keep your jobs and we're giving you a year's notice that we're moving and you get to keep your jobs and can be 100 percent remote. But as you can imagine, because HQ is in Florida, the promotion cycles and the rising will be a little bit different. And they're clowning on that. I lost my shit shit. dude i was writing down because if you didn't say anything i was literally gonna go do an instagram post about that because how freaking titled bougie of yourself how entitled for you to be upset and i'm sure it's a six-figure job that that person was complaining about like if even if it's a five figure job the here's where we're at and you know this vic and boy do i have a funny feeling knowing your audience and what you talk about, like shit got soft out here.

8:31And like, do you understand what our grandmas would think about the work ethic of our children? Our great grandmothers would be rolling in their goddamn graves if they understood what these kids expectations and entitlement was. We got soft and that's what empires do. We need to be real with ourselves in America. And I'm not even talking about rich people. Like I'm not even, like I'm talking the, let me go this route. The average person that makes 60 ,000 a year right now, which is not an extraordinary amount of money, but way closer to the average of what Americans make than people realize. Everybody thinks everyone makes a million dollars now.

9:09When people live, when I was growing up and I was poor, very poor, like poor, then it was lower middle class, then lower, lower, then it was lower, then it was middle class. When I was coming up in my life, all the way to high school. And then I went to college where literally, and this is where I got my spades skills from, I went to a school where 90 % of the kids that I went to school with were on financial aid. I grew up humbly. These kids were from hood, hood culture, okay? When we all grew up, when you had humble stuff, you didn't buy 30 pairs of sneakers. You weren't buying Starbucks. You weren't ordering Uber.

9:51You weren't fucking, what has happened is, yes, there's a separation of wealth issue, which I fully believe in. But you're not allowed to complain when you're buying a$36 cocktail on a Thursday night happy hour when your money's tight. You're not allowed to complain when you've got Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and fucking Paramount Plus when your money's tight. You're not allowed to complain when you've got eight different kith and essential hoodies when your money's tight. When I was growing up and money was tight, we looked poor. My homies had one pair of sneakers. So did I. For fucking three years.

10:32Yep. So what's happened is a combination of things. We've become, unfortunately, too materialistic. Again, motherfuckers had banged up used cars when our money was tight when I was growing up. Mick, everybody's leasing new cars now. Yeah. Everybody's credit is all fucked up. Everyone's in huge debt. People lived within their means in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. We've lost our way. People are buying dumb shit when they don't have money to impress people that they don't even like. We've become insecure. we've become way too nosy we keep up with the joneses let alone the kardashians and we're fucking lost out here and we need to get back to humility to family to fucking simplicity yeah we need to be hungry and ambitious look i'm about that life i'm trying to get every fucking person that's listening to this podcast to a different plane financially and i will tell them how to do that social media content live social shopping like i'll put it out every fucking day.

11:35The problem is when your mindset is complaining and blaming, Mick, I made fucking money with Bush. I made money with Obama. I made money with Trump. I made money with Biden. I made money with Trump. I'm not fucking blaming my problem. By the way, I had problems with Bush. I had problems with Obama, not them. I had problems during their reigns. I'm not pointing fucking fingers at a politician. I'm not even blaming my mama and my daddy. Like, why are we blaming everyone. Everyone's pointing fucking fingers. Why don't you point thumbs at yourself? If you were upset right now, if you don't have the paper you want, if you don't have the relationship you want, become accountable.

12:12Yep. You will win. And I'm not trying to give hard love here. I'm trying to get you out of your place of unhappiness. Blaming is clearly not working for y 'all. Yeah. So why don't you try blaming yourself? You're in bad relationships. stop fucking hooking up with fuck boys. I love it. Dude, literally just had that conversation and I said it a different way. Like I have this thing about being present and always being where your feet are at, right? Well, sometimes you need to just move your freaking feet, right? Like if you don't like where you're at, you can move, you can change. And I don't mean physically moving, but like sometimes it's a mental move.

12:52I mean, physically. Yeah. When I get into deep political conversations with people, I'm like, move. Right. Like, you're allowed. Yeah. If you, you know, some of my friends are like, Sweden. I'm like, move to Sweden. Move to fucking Stockholm, motherfucker. Move. And I'm not saying like, you don't love America, get out. America has plenty of flaws. Yeah. News alert, so does everybody else. Yep. You know, when people like Sweden, I'm like, what's Sweden's suicide rate? If it's so fucking great. oh canada's health care why do motherfuckers that need real surgeries come to america like what are we talking about yeah so again it all sits under one genre which is when you go simple and let me give a big breakthrough this is why i'm so motivated to be on this podcast because i know you're speaking that truth which makes me believe that the people that are listening right now like have the capacity to do it for example one of the biggest things that's screwing everybody up is they're just consuming too much negativity.

13:59Like that's why I'm so, that's why I'm doing this podcast with you. This is double positivity, right? Like you, you want to know why you're not winning. You're hanging out with losing energy. That could be your sister. That could be your auntie. That could be CNN. That could be Fox news. Cause both of them sell fear. You're listening to fear. You're listening to negativity. Like get your game up, like change it up. Like you can't listen i'm not a big proponent of fully cutting family because family's blood but if your dad is the most negative person on earth maybe you don't need to talk to him two times a day maybe once a week or twice a week we'll be okay or if you're like me once every 30 years but that's a different story yeah like you know again like nobody wants nobody i don't want that for you right my hope is that when you cut to once a month once a week versus three times a day, you reset your energy, you're now stronger.

14:56And now you have the ability to go back into the lion's den and try to pull dad out. You see where I'm going? The reason I, and I've seen this, I've done this. The reason I like to teach people to limit time with their negative family members is because if they're the positive one, and they're being affected, dragged down, if they limit it, they build back up their juices, their cup fills back up, and then they can go back into the lion's den and try to pull those people out. And it's hard to change people and they got to do it for themselves and all that stuff. But what ends up happening is if you don't step out and limit, you finally, it sounds like potentially what happened to you and it's happened to me in different situations, you get to a tipping point and then you're fully done.

15:38You know, people like Gary Vee, I can't cut my mom out. Like when I say cut your mom out, in fact, the more you eat her negative toxic shit, the more likely you're going to find judgment day and you're going to actually cut her out. If you limit, you can reset at times. And one day you might be able to last man in Saigon kind of shit and pull them out of the fucking fire. Right. So, and then fuck that's family. Now let's move it. Coworkers, other influencers, homies, um, acquaintances, random people, people in the comments, people in fucking Reddit, cut that negativity out. And you want to know the fastest way to find out who those people are in your so-called circle?

16:19Start winning. Start winning and then see who really is there with you. Because for me, that gave me so much perspective. And you told me it was going to happen. Like, I'm not saying something that Mick just made up. Gary Vee has been saying that for a long time. Start winning and you'll really see the people that were rooting for you and those that held you back. And let me give you a real deep 301 fucking good energy lesson on that one. Let me tell y 'all what I do when I'm winning, when I was winning, when I'm currently winning, what ends up happening. I'm sure all of you thought, hmm, when Mick said that, he said, mm-hmm.

17:00You said, damn, I didn't realize I had so many haters around me. Let me tell you something about the people that boo you. They're just hurt. When you start winning, and I have a feeling a lot of people are going to start winning off this podcast. I can smell it. Once in a blue moon this happens, I can smell it. When those people start booing you that you most thought were going to cheer for you and you're shook, just remember this part of the podcast and remember, don't be mad at them. Feel sad for them and be the bigger person and try to be compassionate and help them too. Because we're so quick to be like, oh, fucking hater.

17:37Fuck, I fucking should have knew it. Fuck you, Sally. Sally, I'm never talking to you again. I thought you were gonna be my number one cheerleader. You're my number one hater. It's cause Sally's scared. You were her misery loves company, buddy. And now you're about to change. And now she's lonely. The fuck she gonna do? Oh shit, a scared dog bites. Yes. She's biting. Don't be mad at her. Don't put her to sleep. Rebuild her. Bring her along. The thing I'm most proud of is the people I've brought along the most were the people that did the most wrong to me at first. That's real strength. That's real love.

18:17That's real winner shit. Speaking of your parents and your journey and all the generosity that you do, man, like you do so much for free, like so much, just here's some tips. Here's how you can do it. I've always wanted to ask you, like, what's your because? What's your purpose? That thing that's deeper than your why for doing the things that you do? Because I'm good. You know, it's, you know, when you're full, you're not really eating everyone's food. You're not, you know, like when you're full, you're handing out food. You know, that's the real answer. I talk about this concept of gratitude and guilt sometimes to that question, because I do feel unbelievably grateful for, again, I started with it impromptu.

19:06The parents I had, especially my mom, the way she raised me, being born in the Soviet Union, coming to America, living in a household full of love with no money. So by the time I was 10, it was ingrained in me that money had no impact on happiness. I'm so happy I grew up in the early 80s, 80s, 90s in Edison, New Jersey. I'm happy I went to Martin Luther King Elementary School. I'm sure for everyone listening knows that means I knew how to scrap. I knew how to play spades and CeeLo. Like I grew up with such humble beginnings and such diversity back to MLK. MLK was not just black kids, black, white, Indian, Asian.

19:44I just, I have so much love in my heart. I grew up with all kinds of people. You know, I've, now that I'm 49, I've lived and been in the muck when I first came to America in a studio apartment been in Queens. I've been poor. I've been in the poor rooms. I've been rich. I'm in the richest rooms. And when you live a coast to coast life, whether you go from rich to poor, which is obviously incredibly challenging or from poor to rich, when you've seen happiness and you've seen despair, you know, when you've seen light and you've seen darkness, you have clarity. And I do the things I do because when I started giving away all my information, my wisdom, my hope, my happiness, and my best practices, I was already good, my man.

20:36You know, I was financially less successful than I am today at 31, 32 when this started happening. But I was equally happy. Yeah. You know, and I was equally gracious and I was equally humble and I was equally hopeful. And the truth is the last 10 years of the world, you know, this given those beautiful words and I'm thankful for them. I have stayed me through every twist and turn, every twist and turn in my own life. But then even more hard when I look at public figures, the culture, and I don't mean black culture, which is actually the culture. I mean, popular culture, culture, political culture, the atmosphere in our society has changed a lot in the last 15 years.

21:17yeah and a lot of people talked about optimism and loved and now pontificate hate in disguise of political views or strategy or bullshit so thing i'm most proud of is i'm consistent i haven't been caught up when the left wanted me to left and when the right wanted me to right i'm just right here in the fucking middle i got love for everyone life is complicated i don't have the audacity to think that everyone should see the world the way I think. I'm blown away by people's audacity to think that everyone should see the world the way they see the world. So I'm staying kind of in my pocket. I'm in my studio, even though I have no music skills.

21:59I think of it as like, I'm in my studio, I'm working, I'm writing, I'm making beats, I'm putting out music. I just do that in a different way. But I'm not trying to go to the red carpet. I'm not trying I go to Ibiza and party. I'm a true musician. And without a musical bone in my body, I'm just in my fucking cocoon, spitting my words, building my businesses, because I think that's important. If I'm gonna pontificate about what to do, I don't wanna be a professor. When I say do this, I did it. When I'm out there today, my morning post, everybody should do social shopping, live shopping. Social media is about to be QVC.

22:37well, I'm doing 100 ,000 a night selling shit on whatnot. Yeah. You know what I mean? So I think that's something else I'm proud of. And now you're running these circles. What's cool for me is before we started, we talked a little bit about Damon. What I like about my life is I'm so fortunate that I have men like you saying what you just said. But what I know is that Damon knows me more and he likes me even more than that because he knows the shit I do behind the camera. Right. There's so many people that are their best selves in front of the camera and they fucking disappoint you off camera. My best work is done when y 'all don't see me.

23:17Yep. Yep. Absolutely, man. You know, it's the same thing. I was just telling you, Robert Irvine and I talked about you for a couple of hours, not even trying to talk about you. You were just a part of the conversation. And we both said the most consistent, authentic person we know is Gary V. Right. And I call you and Robert was laughing because you're right. I said, what I call Gary V is the inconvenient truth, right? He is always going to be consistent. He's going to tell you like it is. And you're going to learn on everything that he says, whether you agree with it or not, which is I don't know why you would not agree, but you are the inconvenient truth, brother.

23:57You know, what's funny, it comes from an interesting place. And I hope, you know, when I do something like this, I want people to get value. So let me tell you all where that comes from. that compliment. It comes from two very, very interesting things. One, it comes from intent. Mick, what makes me super different in hindsight, I knew it was happening along the way, and now it is just on wax, as they say, is I've never thought about anything I've done publicly from any other lens than the intent of why would this be good for Mick? I believe most of the content we consume in our streams, the person that's making it is making it for their best interest.

24:39Buy my course. Make me famous. I want your follow. I want to make money. So make me famous or buy my thing. Like you can smell the intent. My intent has been I'm going to give you all everything I got. the shit I can charge unlimited amounts of money for if I had a masterclass, if I had courses, if I had mentorship programs, inner circles. I'm going to give you all better shit than the people at the top of the game that do that shit. And yes, occasionally I'm going to be like, yo, we want to buy my dad's wine. You want to buy my collectibles at V-front? I'm a businessman, but I have no expectations of anyone that extracts unbelievable value for my free shit.

25:28I do not expect them to buy a V friends trading card or a wine. I don't expect anyone who's listening right now to sign up for wine, text.com. But I said, wine, text.com. Cause I'd love for them to do it. Cause it's my dad's business and I want to help him always. And if they buy wine, don't buy it on bullshit wine.com, buy it on wine, text.com. If I brought you value, but nothing I do is to then later get the thing. Right. And that's why I'm who I am. And I think people forget that humans are animals. I think y 'all can smell it. If I'm out here trying to fake it, if I'm here out fronting, because I really deeply just want you to buy X.

26:13I think most of us know it. Even the ones that are not that in tune, eventually they're going to know it. The other shoe always drops, my man. Always. And so, A, why am I an inconvenient truth? Why am I consistent? because my intent is consistent. The other reason I think I'm consistent or having communion truths is I'm about that life. Meaning when I say I'm in my studio, I often say I'm in my cocoon. What's wild about me is I'm such a talker and I'm so out there. But the reality is, is almost all of my time is spent listening, not talking. When I come up for air and do this podcast, it's on the back of fucking the last 8 ,000 hours I've spent this year studying live social shopping studying uh Sabrina Carpenter versus Netflix versus Andrew Schultz and Shane Gillis versus La Boo Boo's versus Baggy Jeans versus Poppy Soda versus Netflix versus Hulu versus UF I'm a culture savant.

27:19Right. So I'm consistent because I don't talk. You know how they say there's that old saying that I like a lot, like measure twice, cut once. I'm so petrified to be wrong and lose equity. I'm out here measuring 45 times, cutting once. Yes, sir. By the time I'm going to talk about something. That shit has been fucking quadruple checked. It's real. It happened. I'm not guessing out here. I get a lot of extra credit for he sees around corners. He predicts the future. I'm like, nah, I'm just in it day to day. And I'm willing to talk about it faster than most people because I'm in it day to day. I don't need, nobody else is Gary being me.

28:01Y 'all are Gary being me. I'm telling people things and then people are moving. The way I'm learning is not from Johnny or Sally or some other person. I'm in the trenches with all 8 billion of you. Yep. And then I'm creating observations, which I think makes me unique, fresh, because I'm not parroting someone else. I'm in my own feelings. When I know Substack's going to be big a year ago, I'm not going to see who's already talking about Substack, if there's anyone talking about Substack. I'm living Substack, and then I'll talk about Substack, which then makes my point of view original. I'm using music for some weird reason a lot in this interview.

28:46The people that blew us away, Lauryn Hill, Tyler, the Creator, like whoever, right? I believe that they're influenced by people before them. But what they did well was they stayed in their own pocket and they felt unique to us because they are unique to us. They still might have been influenced, right, by Michael Jackson or Aretha Franklin or Prince or Pink Floyd, but they feel original because they are original. And I think other artists come along and have commercial success, but they listened too much. They copied prior people too much. And so they were just half or 25 % original, which was good enough to give them some pop and maybe even a hit record and this and that, but they're not the icons that changed it completely for us.