Mark Metry 00:00
The way that I’ve gained podcast access is it’s all about the guests and the audience. And if you get caught up in talking about yourself too much and not being in line, and not having the intended mindset, you’re just gonna lose.

Will Bachman 00:15
That is Mark metree, who started a YouTube channel when he was 13 years old that gained 35,000 subscribers, and who started a company when he was 15 that generated six figures of income while he was in high school, and became the number one minecraft server in the world. Just a couple of side projects. Mark now 21 runs a marketing agency and also happens to host a top 100 podcast humans 2.0, whose guests have included some of my heroes, such as Seth Godin. To learn more about mark, you can search for humans 2.0, or visit his website, Mark metree.com. And that’s Ma, rk, m e, t, r, y, and the links in the show notes. To make sure that you don’t miss an episode of Unleashed you can sign up for our weekly email at on umbrex.com slash Unleashed. While there, you can also record and submit a question that I will try my best to answer in a future episode of this show. Thanks for listening. Hello, Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Metry 01:24
Thanks for having me.

Will Bachman 01:24
Well, Mark, two years ago, you started a podcast, and you have had at the age of 20. And you’ve had some amazing luminaries invite heroes on the shows Seth Godin Gretchen Rubin, range of incredible people. Talk to me about how you got started with the podcast, and you know, how you’ve reached out to folks leaders in their fields, and convince them to come on your show.

Mark Metry 01:50
You know, I had always been aware of the term podcasting. And, you know, in my own life, 2015 2016, I, you know, sort of entered this very interesting phase in my life where I sort of hit this depression, I was over 200 pounds, and I, you know, really just became conscious of a lot of the things that I was trying to run away from. And, you know, when that happened, it pushed me into sort of, you know, building a next better version of myself, you know, there’s that, quote, that, you know, breakdowns lead to breakthroughs and setbacks are actually just setups for, you know, a better future. And so I was kind of going through that. And, you know, I had started a business I had, you know, started to live the life that I actually wanted to live. And for anyone that is also on that journey, you know, it’s very rewarding, yes, but it’s very, very challenging. And so, in 2017, in the middle of it, you know, I kind of hit like this sort of rut where I didn’t really know what to do with my business, I didn’t really, you know, I was stuck on a few things, I was kind of running into the same, you know, mistakes and errors again, and again, and I didn’t really have the answers. And so I just figured, you know, if I had been listening to podcasts for my own self growth, people like Tim Ferriss, Lewis, Howes Tom, Bill, you, Gary Vaynerchuk, then you know, maybe I can start my own podcast, not, you know, to brand me or to build my influence, although those have been amazing side effects. But just as a sort of intuitive and interactive learning platform for me to learn. Because, you know, at a young age, I’ve learned that the best way, one of the best ways to learn anything, is to have a direct conversation with somebody that is actually doing it. Not a theorist, not somebody that just talks or writes about it, but somebody that is actually doing it today, and they have, you know, an abundance of experience. And so I figured if I can start this podcast, to get me in front of these people, because I think podcasting is the most efficient way to do that, right? Because there’s no way, you know, Seth Godin would respond to some, you know, 2021 year olds email, if I just asked for like, 45 minutes of his time, I don’t have anything to give him. And it’s not the fact that, you know, he selfish Seth is an amazing human being, but it’s the fact that imagine how many emails he gets a day. And, you know, in this sort of beginning social media world that we’re just seeing unfold. A lot of us has sort of have sort of lost the etiquette A lot of us are, you know, not approaching people with sort of a givers mentality, but we’re trying to take we’re trying to say, Hey, can you do this, or can I ask this from you, we’re trying to always grab stuff, but when you can potentially give something to somebody like, you know, obviously, I didn’t get these, you know, luminaries that you talked about at the beginning right away. took a long time, but It’s like, once you have that platform that you’ve built up, and you have sort of attention that, you know, you and your audience have that you can utilize to, you know, help Seth Godin sell a book or more awareness that his brand. I mean, it just works. And it’s like, the second thing is, like, you know, there’s more podcasts now than ever. And so, you know, these people, like, especially these luminaries, you know, they can sniff out Bs and like half a second. And if you send them some email about, oh, I had this show, I’ve been doing it for this. And we talk about these things, and we have these guests, but you’re just not being genuine with your show, they’re just not going to respond back to you. And so a big factor that I’ve really been taking advantage of is, you know, just sort of utilizing a little bit about my story, and just saying, like, yo, you know, I’m, I’m like this young kid, I’ve done XYZ, I’ve been through this. And I’m just like, I’m like, I’m just like, a 21 year old kid out here, just trying to learn. And so they, in my opinion, they really look up to that, because I think they kind of see that, you know, ambitious kind of young, hustler mentality in themselves when, you know, they were my age. And so that’s how I’ve landed like, unbelievable interviews. And, man, you should see my you should see my upcoming guests list, man, it hasn’t even started yet. Very excited. That is awesome. Congratulations. Now. So your podcast humans 2.0. It’s all about you really on this journey to explore and try to understand the best of you know, thinking from all sorts of fields. Tell me like some of the maybe highlights of lessons learned that you’ve picked up over the course of of all these discussions? Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. But you know, I want to go to something that, you know, you said that, and we kind of talked about about me starting my podcast, in this podcast about my own journey. That is the intention, and that’s the way that I use it today. But honestly, you know, if you took a listen on my podcast, you probably wouldn’t think that. Because, you know, I’ve learned that, you know, a lot of these people today that are starting podcasts, you know, they’re trying to brand themselves as experts or influencers, or they’re trying to say, Hey, you know, come listen to my podcast, and I’m gonna get on all these guests. But, you know, I’m really gonna sort of be running my own show, and I’m just gonna get these people on to help my personal brand grow. And it’s like, I hate that mentality. Because first off, it’s not going to work. And second off, you know, the way that I’ve gained podcast access, is, it’s all about the guests and the audience. And if you get caught up in talking about yourself too much, and not being in line, and not having the intended mindset, you’re just gonna lose. And so for me, it’s really, the podcast is really all about the people that are listening to it all the humans, and you know, some of the some of the most mind blowing things that I’ve learned, I mean, it’s a, it’s a gigantic, you know, list. It’s a big, you know, file of libraries that’s running through my mind. But, you know, honestly, one thing that sticks out is, so I interviewed this guy, his name is Naveen Jain. He’s like this billionaire philanthropist. He has, you know, one of the he has the only space company in the world that is authorized to actually land on the moon, other than, like, governments of nations. And you know, he’s not only doing that, but he also has this healthcare company called veyo. And the reason why he started that is because his dad actually very, very recently passed away from pancreatic cancer. And, you know, when he was going through the process with his dad of taking him to, you know, the facilities, the laboratories, the hospitals, and you’ve got to keep in mind, this guy basically has all the money in the world, so he can afford every kind of medical treatment. And, you know, nothing worked. And he just saw how inefficient and awful this kind of healthcare system is. And so he went on this quest to be like, what can we actually do to help all the people out there that are suffering from chronic illnesses that are robbing them from their life, you know, they show up to the ER or they go to their doctor every month or whatever. And they have different sorts of symptoms, and they give them this prescription drug for it. And then a year later, something else pops out. And it’s just like, what he actually found was, you know, he actually ended up going to Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. It’s part of the US military government, research facilities, and it’s actually where the like atomic bomb was invented. And so he went there and You know, since he’s a billionaire, he saw this tool. I don’t know the name of the tool I forget. But basically this tool, the government, our government spent billions of dollars creating it in order to defend us against a bioterrorist attack. So, you know, if you’re living in a city, and there’s some kind of terrorist attack, where they drop a chemical agent, and you know, certain people get sick, and you know, there’s not a quarantine, and they have to identify now, who exactly is sick on a cell by cell basis, you know, no matter what the kind of illness or sicknesses. So he saw that, and he was like, wait, if they’re finding out what what can make people sick, I can use this license it to help people that are actually sick in the healthcare system, like most of us, and then I can also reverse engineer it to get people to be healthy. And so he combined that technology alongside this other very, very fascinating piece of emerging science that, you know, I think is going to be sort of like a flat earth moment for us humans. But they’ve actually found that, you know, our heat, our human genome, expresses about 20,000 human genes. And we also have this thing called the gut microbiome. And it is this very vast ecosystem of like bacteria, fungus, probiotics, prebiotics, yeasts of viruses, that, basically, you know, if you actually look at it, you know, we produce 20,000 human genes, they actually produce two to 20 million genes. And so if you actually, you know, Google this, do you actually do this, the research on this, you can actually see a tremendous amount of diseases, illnesses, that are all being linked back to the imbalance of the gut microbiome. So I’m talking about things like autism, ADHD, depression, asthma, anxiety, insomnia, heart diseases, some kinds of cancer, Alzheimers, dementia, really just a wide, wide, wide variety of chronic illnesses. And you know, when they actually take a look at the research, they find that, for the most part, two things cause our gut microbiome to go in balance, which end up creating all these chronic illnesses. And here’s the thing, even if you don’t have a chronic illness, the impact of the gut microbiome could be the difference between how well you feel when you wake up to you know, are you getting brain fog in the middle of the day? You know, if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a business person, you know, are you are you kind of like having you taking down after lunch? Or do you not have the ability to focus. And so they’ve actually found that there’s two main reasons for this gut imbalance. And the first one is actually dietary allergy. So you know, everyone knows about like, things like peanut allergies, and things like that, it’s actually a lot more complex than we think. And people have all different sorts of allergies, even allergies to foods that we generally regard as healthy. So like some people out there in the world, should not be eating broccoli, cauliflower, you know, just kind of like the healthiest foods. And the other reason is stress. And so what Naveen has been able to do through like this company that I believe is gonna fundamentally disrupt the health care system and just human performance in general, is, you know, he’s been able to create the world’s first functional microbiome test. I know some people have heard of like a gut microbiome test, but all the other tests out there are just incomplete. They don’t actually provide you with the correct data. Like I know 23andme has a food thing now and it’s just, it’s incorrect. It can tell you some things about sort of just like the human genetics part, but there is no test out there except for biome actually has the ability to do all this stuff. And so I took this test, and it actually told me that I need to be completely avoiding allmans which I was literally eating every single day because I thought they were healthy. oats, pistachios, lobster, and then even like some vegetables that I thought were healthy, which we’re you know, zucchini, finish beets, bell peppers, leeks, green beans, and I’m not trying to say that these foods are unhealthy, they can actually be really healthy for some people. And you know, they’ve actually found that between you and I will and most other human beings listening. We have, you know, our DNA is 99 point 90 999 9% identical, but our microbiome only has a 5% similarity rate. To the person sitting next to you. And so when Naveen told me about this, and I took the test, and I, you know, I started experiencing, you know, a tremendous amount of, you know, results, I started having more energy consistently throughout the day than I’ve ever had. And well, you know, drinking less coffee and all those other stimulants that we use. I’ve had zero brain fog, fog, my focus, and my memory now is just like a laser, whatever I aim it at is there until I move it. I’ve had tremendous benefits when it comes to my sleep. And so, you know, when people ask me, what’s the best thing you’ve learned about this podcast, it’s honestly been, you know, I’ve had so many other guests. But it’s honestly been the Veen and this viome test that, you know, gives the people that are not only experiencing things like anxiety and depression, like I experienced, all the way to people that may or may not have these things, but are just looking for just like a very, very natural way of just like eating and understanding what’s right for them. And so they can, you know, map out their efforts with the proper biological resources that their body now has to improve. You know, today, this is not something I’m talking about that, you know, is going to be available five years from now, I’m talking about today, like literally right now.

Will Bachman 16:19
Yeah, wow, that is a, that’s quite a, that’s quite a story. And it’s probably not something that you were expecting to learn when you started the podcast, which is sort of a, you know, an example of the sort of serendipity from having conversations, tell me a little bit about you’ve done a really amazing job of kind of growing your listenership of the podcast, you know, to quite a substantial audience, you’ve also done a really amazing job of growing your kind of engagement on LinkedIn, I think something like 20,000 people follow you on LinkedIn, perhaps you’ve sort of applied some of the lessons from your own firm, I know you run a marketing marketing practice. Tell me about what you’ve done to beyond just sort of putting the show out there. How have you grown the audience of your podcast? A lot of my listeners, who are consultants who create thought leadership, would I think be interested in some of the lessons learned that you’ve have how to grow an audience?

Mark Metry 17:14
Absolutely. That’s a great question. So you know, I’m 21 years old, but believe it or not, I’ve actually been doing this whole sort of marketing branding promotion stuff for actually a decade, I got, I got on the internet when I was 11 years old. And I ended up actually starting my first six figure business when I was 15 years old. And so one of the things that I ended up doing when I was like, a super young kid was going on YouTube. And I’d record these YouTube videos. And this was at a time before, you know, YouTube was YouTube. You know, there was no such thing as like, you know, watching videos on the internet. And like, whenever I told people, they would instantly say, Oh, wait, dude, you, you put videos of yourself on the internet, like, that’s so weird. But yet everyone today is sort of doing it. And so I actually ended up having 35,000 subscribers at that time. And I actually ended up quitting. Because one, I didn’t realize how serious the opportunity was. And two, I just listened to the people outside of me. And so with that mental model being said, in my mind, when I got in the podcast game, I actually saw the same exact thing happened. There were people that were in the podcast industry, that were sort of doing it, nobody was really taking it seriously. And when I started my podcast, people didn’t really understand like, this is in 2017. So this isn’t even that long time ago, people didn’t really understand what it was people didn’t understand what I was doing. And, you know, every day, I would get a message from somebody saying, like, Yo, dude, I’m going to start my podcast, it’s going to be on this, this and that. And I’ll just be like, cool. You know, let me know how it goes. Let me know if I can help you with anything. And you know, those people, most of them never actually ended up starting a podcast. The reason why I’m saying all of this is, I think a really important factor is to understand how damn important podcasts are. I recently saw this, this LinkedIn original video article that was talking about the recent acquisition that Spotify made for something like $500 million dollars to acquire a bunch of different podcasting platforms. And they were saying, you know, podcasting within the next couple years, is just going to be about a billion dollar industry on its own, but it’s going to generate billions and billions of dollars of revenue for other industries. And so with that being said, you know, if you can take something seriously and really hit it hard when nobody else is doing it, you’re actually going to realize that you’re only competing with a about just a handful of people. And so that is really what I did. Well, I saw this, I saw this sort of mental model appear, you know, in my head, and I saw the patterns of history. And I just said, I’m gonna hit this really hard. And, you know, the way that I actually did it is so, you know, in 2017, when I had started my podcast, I didn’t take it seriously at all, I would record a guest, like, maybe once in a while, I wouldn’t do any kind of prep or work, I just kind of do whatever, right. And so, at the beginning of June of January 1 2018, you know, I started to actually understand this whole mental model that I told you. And so I started to post more frequently, because, you know, the current sort of, you know, industry advice for podcasts, that that time 2017 2018 was, Oh, yeah, you just got a post once a week. And I’m not saying that that’s necessarily wrong. But what I’m saying is, if you have the ambition to grow your podcast, you can’t be posting once a week, you know, and like, the analogy that I’ll make with that is like, you know, we look at these other big podcasters, like, you know, Tim Ferriss and, and any other person that has a successful podcast that only post once a week, and it’s like, what is your brand, like, really, at the height of Tim Ferriss, for you to be doing what he’s doing, you got to be doing more. And so when I started to figure that out, I started to put in more effort, and I started to produce more podcasts, I started to make around, like, three to five a week, I really started hitting it hard. And I’ll tell you the next sort of, you know, evolution that I had, that really began to take my podcast to the next level, as ended up, you know, interviewing this guy on my podcast, and Kyle mogan. And, you know, he was he used to be on Gary Vaynerchuk. ‘s, content team. And I had him on the podcast, I interviewed him. And, you know, I put out the interview, and that was that that was kind of my normal procedure. And, you know, we were talking and he was telling me, you know, Mark, you know, did you make any sort of kind of micro content, like any kind of like mini videos, or, you know, images or anything like that, so I can put it up on my own page. So, my followers, my audience can, you know, check out our conversation on your podcast? And I was like, No, I don’t like I’ve never done that before. And so he kind of, you know, walked me through and kind of told me, like, dude, you got to start making this micro content as sort of a gateway magnet to get new listeners to grow your audience. And so ever since he told me that I, you know, I was just kind of pursuing this micro content video game. And, you know, the next thing was, no, I interviewed this guy named Quintin alums. He’s, like, one of the top creators on LinkedIn. And, you know, I kind of saw his story of how he was a totally normal dude. And, of course, it’s still a normal day today is like Superman or anything. But, you know, he kind of went from somebody that had negative $900, in his bank account, to today, you know, starting the fastest growing companies in his city. And I saw how he used LinkedIn a lot for that. And so, you know, after I had him on my podcast, I started to implement the things that he told me about LinkedIn, you know, on my own profile, and at first, you know, it started off real slow, like, you know, I look back to it now, and, you know, some of my early, early, early videos would get, like, two likes, or they get like, you know, three, four likes to one comment or something. And, you know, today, you know, obviously, everything goes up and down, but I’ve had videos that you have hit well over, you know, like, half a million views. And it’s just like, Yeah, and it’s just like this, you know, if if, if even point oh, 1% of people are actually compelled enough to click the link to go to my podcast, that’s still a massive amount of listeners. And it’s like, you know, when you will, when you asked me, you know, how many downloads is your podcast get before we started recording? You know, I like I honestly, I don’t really look, because it’s growing so fast, because I’m putting out this content now at scale, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, the people that are seeing it that I’ve had on as guests are commenting on it, or they’re posting it on their own page. And that’s now growing my audience, not just to kind of like the organic LinkedIn stuff, but now to their eyes. Now, people who are interested in what Seth Godin have to say, Now subscribe to my podcast. And it’s just like when you sort of run that and you do that for a long time. You basically create Infinite Opportunities that, you know, you don’t even know what to do with and, you know, reaching out to people like some of the greats

Will Bachman 25:00
We talked about it becomes infinitely more easy when you’ve been building this vehicle, this platform that you know, you’ve been building that is not only authentic and genuine. And honestly, I’d say those have been the main things for sure. Yeah, that’s amazing. Tell us a little bit about this micro content. What does that look like? And how do you go about creating those?

Mark Metry 25:21
Yeah, so I mean, if you just, you know, go to my Instagram, or if you go to my LinkedIn, Mark mastery, you’ll see what I’m talking about. But all it is, is, you know, I’ll take, you know, like, here’s a compelling, you know, 50, to 62nd clip of where my guest says something that I think is, you know, really important, might be thought provoking might, you know, grab somebody’s attention. And I’ll simply take that clip, and I’ll, you know, myself or I’ll have somebody on my team, you know, create a nice graphic that, you know, has a good headline, that is also, you know, thought provoking, like I had on you know, JP, Sears, you know, very out there, dude, he’s got, you know, like, his, his videos went viral. And they’re called, like, ultra spiritual, or, you know, he’s being sarcastic, making fun of a bunch of stuff, I’m pretty sure, there’s got over like, a billion views. And like, just for an example, like, the headline that I use for him was when we were kind of talking about fear, and how you’ve got to use fear to your advantage. And the headline was, you know, in big words, use fear, like a compass, and then you put a picture of JP on there, and then you use the kind of video software to then create sort of captions, live captions that move along his his voice. And it’s just like, if you do that enough times, you know, you’re gonna win, just make sure they are interesting, compelling, make sure they are authentic and genuine. You know, this obviously depends on the person. But I guarantee you, if you make videos on LinkedIn today, that are like, Hey, dude, you know, I run this marketing agency, and you check out these top five hacks for your marketing, I guarantee your videos just gonna bomb, because everyone has a very, very busy day. And it’s like, in my opinion, I genuinely think it is delusional for somebody to think that just because they have a podcast, like a 3040 minute episode, or whatever it is, that, you know, if you’re just going to tweet it out, if you’re just going to go on your LinkedIn and say, Hey, guys, check out Episode 20. With this guest, here’s the link by and you genuinely think people are gonna click on your podcast, and you’re gonna get new listeners, you’re delusional matter, the fact is, the market has never been more congested. And if you’re not doing this every single day, you’re just not going to have a big podcast. And for me, that was one of my goals. So yeah, they’re interesting. So taking pieces of it, and it’s not even your recording, you know, video of your listeners, but it’s taking some graphic, putting some voice on it, making it into a short one minute video, and then putting that on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn. And there’s many different versions, right? Like, the videos are often what become the most popular, it could just be, you know, you taking your phone, like, let’s say, you know, you have five minutes before work or something, and you don’t necessarily half time, you can literally just pull out your phone. And, you know, I don’t know, record a video and say, like, you know, maybe started off with like a quote, like, let’s say, you just put out a podcast episode with Seth Godin. And you put, you know, you begin the video with a sort of quote, that Seth Godin has, like, for example, what is that, it’s, you know, you know, you can’t wait to be picked, you have to pick yourself. And you can just like, talk, just yourself in your face, like nothing special, or fancy, just like a minute or two on like, what that actually means. And you can say, Hey, you guys are like, if you guys found this interesting, you’ll find the podcast way more interesting. And then you could also do, like, you know, an image of a quote, with your guests in the background. You could also, you know, there’s a wide variety of different things that you can play around with it, you could, you know, write an article, like, top five things I learned from Seth Godin. So it’s really about, you know, creating those pieces of micro content, like the little vehicles to get people to be attracted to gear, the main podcast, and it comes in many different forms.

Will Bachman 29:26
How have you grown your LinkedIn following? Do you kind of reach out to people? Or is it when people kind of see one of your videos, they start following you tell me a little bit about that?

Mark Metry 29:36
Yeah, so 99% of it is from the content, right? Because, you know, when you make kind of like this digestible content that somebody can look at, just like when they’re scrolling on their phone, like on the subway, or whatever for a minute, what you’re really doing is you’re like sending out a beacon. And that beacon has data and information of potentially people that are like minded towards that kind of topic in the video, or maybe even yourself. And so, you know, I’ve, I’ve literally been posting on LinkedIn every single day, since like, February or March of last year of 2018. And it’s like when you do that, and you’re just constantly sending out these beacons, that’s how you really grow your following. Like, that’s really yeah, and the other thing that I would say, is to be human. So many people now, you know, are now utilizing social media for whatever their brand, they’re trying to grow their podcast, they’re trying to sell something as a part of their company, that they have a job at, whatever. It’s like, I think a lot of us have lost, or maybe just need to be reminded of what it actually means to be human on social media. And it’s not that social media is bad, it’s just that I think maybe this, these kinds of platforms are really new. And maybe we haven’t developed the kind of etiquette for it. And it’s like this, you know, I get, you know, I open up my LinkedIn right now. And I get, you know, I see 15 messages of people that are sending me you know, various things from, you know, hit, you know, Hey, Mark, that was a great video last night. I you know, I love that right? Or like, Hey, Mark, I listened to this, you are like I binge 10 episodes of your podcast, this, this is that I love, I love all that. And then I’ll get a message for somebody that says, Oh, hey, you know, hey, Monica, you know, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m a, I’m an associate here. And, you know, I was just wondering if, you know, you wanted to, I don’t know, grab a virtual cup of coffee with me or anything like that. And, you know, my instant reaction is, you know, I get about 100, like, 150 of those every single day. And it’s like, first off, you know, who are you, like, I don’t even know who you are. But you are reaching out to me, you know, from my experience, not always, there’s people that kind of just send out those quick kinds of messages are just looking for Quick Hits, they’re looking for quick successes, whether it’s, you know, a prospecting call, or something like that, you know, I’m not trying to paint the image that everyone you know, everyone is just out there in it for themselves on social media. But it’s like when you can go back to the beginning of this conversation, when you can genuinely just be a giver of information of connecting somebody of introducing somebody else’s, somebody else. That is how you truly become a human on LinkedIn. And if you embrace those values of just being a normal human, and just like, pretending that, you know, you wouldn’t send a LinkedIn message, or you wouldn’t write a LinkedIn post to something that you wouldn’t say to somebody in real life, like, you wouldn’t walk up to a random person and be like, hey, check out, you know, check out my podcast are like, Hey, you know, buy this for me. It’s just like, it’s not human. So I think if you like, all the people that I’ve talked to that have built crazy followings on LinkedIn, nothing, you know, my following is nothing compared to them. They’ve all told me the same thing. It’s all about being a human, and then finding a way to scale that in a very genuine, authentic way that doesn’t dilute from that. So making content of either your guests where you’re actively educating people, or maybe it’s something that you learned, and just being human, I think those are the main keys to success on LinkedIn, and just doing it every day.

Will Bachman 33:19
I got to go back and ask you about the business that you started when you’re 15.

Mark Metry 33:25
Yeah, yeah. You know, honestly, when I look back at that, I’m just like, wait, I did that. So so the YouTube channel that I had told you about, you know, that was all centered around video games. That was the kind of kid that I was growing up. I was just really into video games. And when I was when I was 15. You know, one of my friends. He was like, Hey, man, have you heard of this video game called Minecraft? And, you know, I said, Oh, yeah, of course, I’ve heard of it. You know, Minecraft is, you know, one of the biggest games out there for, you know, people that are under the age of 18. And I was like, Nah, man, that’s a stupid game. But eventually, after him hitting me up again, again, you know, eventually, you know, I ended up playing the game. And you don’t want to play that we played it with like, these online servers. So like, we’d Google, you know, Minecraft multiplayer servers. These were, you know, compute big computers that hosted these multiplayer servers, where you could just join in, you know, with your friends, and you guys can play together with like, different kinds of game modes. And, you know, we joined the server, like the first day of me playing this game. And, you know, this server was, you know, really laggy didn’t have good connection. It honestly just wasn’t fun. Like the game modes on there sucked. And so the next day, I literally, you know, ended up starting my own minecraft server. I just ended up googling. It didn’t have any, like, I didn’t have any clue what I was doing at the time. And so, you know, to keep the story short, you know, through just sort of, you know, how Having fun and not really setting out there with like, Oh, I’m gonna start this with a business plan and hit revenue here, I just started with like $15. And it became the world’s number one minecraft server in like seven, eight months, and it became generating, you know, ridiculous amount like six figures with like a 99% profit margin eventually ended up having the staff, you know, our overall, you know, website was getting hit up about like 10 million times, kind of like our registered members on our on our our premium members that were paying was in the 10s of 1000s. And it was just like, a miraculous time in my life. And it you know, ultimately taught me that this whole internet thing and how you can be somebody without any kind of money without any connections without a network. And you can do something, and you can, you know, genuinely just start something if you want to have fun with your friends, and make a living out of that. And so yeah, there’s a really interesting time for sure. My life. So, so how did your minecraft server become the number one in the world? What were you doing differently that that led to such success? Yeah, I mean, it’s so interesting. So you know, looking back at it now, it was like, all very, very intuitive, like a lot of the things that we talked about today, like content marketing, and like community marketing, and like outreach, and SEO, and all those words, I was just like doing those, just like intuitively, and I had like, to be honest with you, I didn’t even know what the word marketing was until I had turned like 18. Honestly, the way I answer that the best way, is, you know, this was a community for me. You know, I don’t know if we talked about this, but I had a lot of social anxiety growing up, I didn’t have too many friends. And so this was sort of like, where I would go to talk to people that may or may not have been in a similar situation in real life is me. And so when you approach it from that lens, it’s not really about like a different kinds of marketing tactics and growth hacks. But it’s really just like, how can I make this a good enough place where people will join every single day, and then tell the people they love the most about that. And honestly, I’ve carried that same philosophy with everything else that I’ve done. And if you can really ingrain the community, and what it is that you’re doing, you know, you’re gonna win, that I just think you need to have the best intentions in mind. And so I think that’s the best answer I could give you. That’s, that’s amazing. Tell us a little bit about your marketing firm, our only clients are actually in the immersive technologies industry. So things like virtual reality, augmented mixed reality. And, you know, we’re actually planning on, you know, starting to develop software, and those various kinds of technology fields. And, you know, we’re, we’re now branching out into podcasting, just because it’s a crazy, crazy market, we’re working with a fortune 500 today, and some other individuals and, you know, gotten some crazy results built, you know, top 10 podcasts for people in their niche. So the marketing agency for me, man, to be honest with you, just sort of like my treadmill, it is the way in which I run, run, run every day, experiment, learn from, because, you know, I know, I’m gonna look back 10 years from now. And you know, with the, with the abundance of this kind of marketing, quote, unquote, which I really think that marketing is just kind of like the inner plumbing of how this world’s communication actually runs. And I’ve learned that communication is of the utmost importance to me. And, you know, I want to be pushing out ideas and messages of value, and not just about, you know, silly, mundane, trivial things. And so that is going to require me to have the utmost amount of knowledge and wisdom, and practical application of this whole marketing communications thing for everything else that I’m going to do in my life. And so, you know, it’s a very sort of, you know, boutique agency, so to speak, that only works with a lot of, you know, select people that we think we can help. But yeah, I mean, that’s really the best way that I can describe it. And, you know, for me, I sort of built this marketing agency when I was coming out of this, you know, bad time in my life, and it was really the initiation of a conquest that I had started to, you know, kind of discover myself and, you know, build that human version 2.0 that’s inside of me.

Will Bachman 39:43
Now, you mentioned that you’re 21 some listeners might be wondering if you graduated from college, tend to college. Tell us a little about that. And if not what tell us tell us about the decision process for you.

Mark Metry 39:55
Yeah, and so, you know, for me, you know, I came from, you know, an immigrant family. Namely that it has a very high standard on education. And, you know, like, I remember, my parents made me promise them to graduate college, like in high school, because they had started to, you know, kind of see what I was doing the wealth that I had been creating, and, you know, making, you know, making an income of people that, you know, would be graduating from college, and maybe you would get, like, five years or 10 years out. And so, you know, I kind of promised them and, you know, honestly, you know, I, I’m in college, and want a break. But you know, the reason is, is I’ve just gotten really busy, and I’ll see how it is. But, you know, college is definitely something that I plan to complete. And, you know, although it may not exactly be an amazing, like business proposition model for some people, like, you know, go to go to college for a year spend $40,000. And if it’s not a good college, like learn from professors that have no idea what they’re talking about, they that might not necessarily be a great idea. But I mean, listen, I think if you have the money, if you don’t know what to do with your life, and you go to what good college and what I mean, by good colleges, there’s other smart people around you, I think it’s all about sort of spreading those different kinds of ideas, and learning amongst each other. Because you know, you in 10 years, you’re really gonna have no idea 1020 years, you’re really gonna have no idea who, you know, maybe that kid that you sat in class with is going to be like the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. And so I just think it’s something for everyone to sort of explore on their own and kind of look at the pros and cons. But, you know, I definitely would not be where I am, if I didn’t have the exposure of college, for sure. And that’s not necessarily to, like, give props to my college, but it’s just like, I think people need to get out of their environment, no matter what kind of environment it is, and just sort of switch differentiate, become immersed in different environment. And you’d be surprised to see what happens beyond changing the diet, or is there anything else that you’ve learned through the process of your podcast interviews, that you have gone and implemented in your own life? Yeah, so I think that I think that diet is definitely, you know, massive nutrition, like we talked about, I would say, honestly, the next sort of best thing is sleep. The studies are now showing that, you know, your body basically heals itself when you’re sleeping. In my opinion, sleep is actually it, for some people could have the potential to be more important than the food and the diet. And I think, you know, for me, when I first started sort of started my entrepreneurial journey, you know, I was like, Hey, I’m gonna, you know, sleep for, you know, six and a half hours, or something like that. But by the time I actually fell asleep, it would be more or less something like six hours, or maybe a little bit closer, a little bit earlier than that. And honestly, I think that’s not really acceptable. And it’s, you know, if you actually look at the science, people can Google this unless you’re a human being that has this unbelievably rare genetic disposition. About rare I mean, it’s like, in like the point oh, 1% of humans. Yeah, those people can actually like sleep for four hours, and their body can process totally fine. I wish I had that. But for most of us, you know, the actual scientific number and I’ve had various sleep experts come on my show, it’s, it’s seven and a half hours, plus or minus 30 minutes. So anywhere from seven to eight hours, is what your body requires for you to be able to fully function. The next day, I’ve learned for me, it’s, you know, more around seven, but you get there and you sort of fine tune it with the other things that you do. If you find a good coping stress mechanism like meditation or yoga, or journaling, or, you know, doing 1000 other healthy coping stress mechanisms, you know, that’s going to help out your sleep. If you have a good diet and you’re exercising, that’s also going to help out your sleep, you know, but, you know, for example, Olympic athletes, they need to be sleeping like 10 hours a day, because their body needs to rebuild the muscle and we know that happens, or a big part of that process happens while you are asleep. And so the biggest thing is, is I would say make sure you are you are quality sleeping well enough. You know, that doesn’t mean waking up in the middle of the night. That doesn’t mean you know checking your phone right before you go to bed. That doesn’t mean just sleeping with the TV on. It thinks that and if I could go on like a little bit of a tinge. I know we have to go but I would suggest you want to try out hypnotherapy. It sounds weird, but just google it at Basically all it is is you put in headphones when you go to sleep. And it’s an audio track of some kind of a, you know, information details, right? Because, you know, when you’re asleep, you know, your brain falls into the subconscious eventually. And that’s actually, you know, subconscious dictates like 90% 95% of your behavior throughout the conscious day. And you can’t actually access the subconscious during the conscious day. So the only way to do it is during sleep. So if you can put on a good track, a good kind of audio tape, you can you can you just totally rewire your mindset within like a couple of weeks and not kind of have this baggage underneath. So I think those two are really, really important for sure.

Will Bachman 45:48
Wow. Well, Mark, that is a ton of stuff to consider what an amazing what an amazing career you’ve had already building incredible business at the age of 15. And, yeah, a really great podcast. What is the best place for people to go online and find out more about you?

Mark Metry 46:07
Yeah, so I mean, just just Google my name Mark metree, ma rk I mean to your why, you know, I’m the most active on probably LinkedIn, Instagram. But if you if you definitely want to get in touch with me and more than likely or not receive a response. Just shoot me an email. It’s mark at V new dream calm, and I’ll be sure to get back to you.

Will Bachman 46:30
Fantastic. Mark, thank you so much for being on the show.

Mark Metry 46:34
My pleasure. Well, this is fantastic. Thanks for listening to this episode of Unleashed the show that explores how to thrive as an independent professional. Unleashed is sponsored by Umbrex, the world’s first global community of top tier independent management consultants. The mission of Umbrex is to create opportunities for independent management consultants to meet, share lessons learned and collaborate. I’d love to get your feedback and hear any questions that you’d like to see us answer on this show. You can email me

47:06
at unleashed@umbrex.com that’s umbrx.com.

47:12
If you found anything on the show helpful, it would be a real gift if you would let a friend know about the show. And take a minute to leave a review on iTunes, Google Play or Stitcher and if you subscribe, our show will get delivered to your device every Monday. Our audio engineer is Dave Nelson. Our theme song was composed by Gary neg Bower and I’m your host Will Bachman. Thanks for listening