Gary Vee: Reveals How Interest Media Is Changing the Game | Mick Unplugged podcast

Are you struggling with your social media, likes, clicks, engagement? It's probably because you're thinking about social media and you should be thinking about it as interest media. And this podcast episode, I sit down with the goat, he's going to break down literally every single thing that you need to know about interest media. But we're going to go further, we're going to go deeper, we're going to talk about some things that you've never heard Gary Vee talk about. This podcast is the one you want to listen to. Buckle up, it's live. Gary, how you doing today, brother?

That's very kind, my man. Thank you so much. I'm doing quite well and I'm glad to be here.

I'm. I'm the honored one, man. You don't know how much you mean to me, to my life, to my businesses, most importantly to my podcast, man. I started this podcast 18 months ago, so well before it became the number one self improvement podcast, before it started doing crazy numbers, you were in my ear and you said, mick, if you're gonna do a podcast, do it with purpose and do it like a business. Because so many people play, if you wanna make impact, do it for real. So I owe you that, man. And no one knows that. I've never told you that, but that's why I do what I do. Because in my ear you said, run it like a freaking business or don't do it at all.

Thank you, my man. Thank you so much. I mean, you know, I'm in this great point in my career where it's, you know, it's, I'm detached from it because, you know, as the great poet once said, never get high in your own supply. Right? Like, I'm detached from what I know I've been able to accomplish. The, the humility comes very natural to me because I was well mothered. But God, it feels really nice, man, like, to really know that I'm putting out stuff there for the last 15 years that people that have amassed more, more wealth, more fame, more happiness than I have on the backs of the content and the words that I've put out over this last decade and a half, it feels like a life worth living. And I hope God blesses me with another 50 years to keep building on it because it really is intoxicating to me. Those compliments, those words are dramatically more delicious to me than any of the fruits of my labor. There's no private flight, there's no car or watch or vacate. Well, vacation, because it's family life. But there's very few things outside of my family that bring me more joy than those words. And I'll tell you why. Because I actually think it's a bigger cosign hat tip flower to my parents, to New Jersey, to America, to good parenting than it is to. I'm the byproduct, my man.

Yeah.

You know, I'm the byproduct of humble beginnings, you know, so thank you. And I will pass those words on to my parents.

I love that brother. Tell them I said hello. And 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, sometimes to that question, because I do feel unbelievably grateful for. Again, I started with it impromptu. The 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, 80s 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. I 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 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. You know, I was financially less successful than I am today at 31, 32 when this started happening. But I was equally happy 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. 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.

Yeah.

And a lot of people talked about optimism and love 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. And when the right wanted me to write, 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, I think of it as like, I'm in my studio, I'm working, I. 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 to go to Ibiza and party. I'm a true musician, and without a musical bone in my body, I'm just in my cocoon, spitting my words, building my businesses, because I think that's important. If I'm going to pontificate about what to do, I don't want to be a professor.

Yeah.

You know 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. Well, 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, you know, 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 I do behind the camera.

Right.

There's so many people that are their best selves in front of the camera and they disappoint you off camera. My best work is done when y' all don't see me.

Yep, 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 Vee. Right? And I call you. And Robert was laughing, but he goes, you're right. I said, what I call Gary Vee 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.

You 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 y' 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 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. Buy 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 y' all everything. I got the shit. I can charge unlimited amounts of money for it. If I had a master class, if I had an island, if I had courses, if I had mentorship programs, inner circles, I'm gonna give you all better shit than the people at the top of the game that do that. And yes, occasionally, I'm gonna be like, yo, you wanna buy my dad's wine? You wanna buy my collectibles at Beef, right? Like, I'm gonna have things. I'm a businessman, right? But I have no expectations of anyone that extracts unbelievable value for my free shit. I do not expect them to buy a Veefriends trading card or a wine. I don't expect anyone who's listening right now to sign up for winetext.com. but I said winetext.com because I'd love for them to do it. Because 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 winetext.com if I've 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, I 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 have inconvenienced 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 Sabrina Carpenter vs Netflix vs Andrew Schultz and Shane Gillis vs Labubus vs Baggy Jeans vs Poppy Soda vs Netflix vs HUL vs UFC. I'm a culture savant, right? 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 gonna 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? Y' 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. 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.

Yep.

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.

Correct.

I'm using music for some weird reason, a lot in this interview. The people that blew us away, Lauryn Hill, Tyler, the creator, like. 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, that. But they're not the icons that changed it completely for us. I'm not saying I'm an icon or completely changed it for us, but using your kind opening, I do understand why I've hit. And now let me bring it for everyone who's listening. The more you're you. I'm going to say it nice and slow for the kids in the back. You can slow down your. Your. What is that thing you run on your treadmill right now? Or you can let your dog pee real quick or you can pull over on the side of the road. If you're listening right now, I need you to hear this. The more you're you. And I mean all the way you. I've cursed. I've Cursed twice, Mick, in this interview so far, it is not lost. It's not lost on me that 15 to 5,000 people just decided, okay, I'm not with Gary Vee, because I don't. You know, especially. 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.

Yeah, yeah, dude, again, that's who you are. If I got anything from you and Daymond John, it was this. And it's just what you just said. Mick, you are the brand.

Correct. You're the.

And whatever.

You're people. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I apologize. It just happened two minutes ago. Two people today in my office asked me. They're young kids who are interning who then going to go back to college, and they want to build personal brands because, you know, every kid now wants to be famous, right? And they're like, how? 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.

We could end right now, but we're not going to, because again, you and Damon both 18 months ago, when I started the podcast, and I was like, all right, I'm going to run it like a business, but I do so many things. How do I figure out what's the angle? What's the lane? And Damon goes, mick, just be you. Just be the brand. And then the things that you do are the services or products that you. That you provide.

When I started doing those garage sale videos. Trash talk, right?

Yeah.

Where I go out and spend 113 bucks buying a bunch of trash at garage sales and then show people that's worth 800 on eBay. I had billionaires, the titans, the most famous people on earth that we all follow and think are the best businessmen. And women literally reach out to me and say, why are you doing this? You're belittling yourself. And I said, the reason I'm doing it is because when I do podcasts like Mick and I Talk about investing $25,000 into Twitter and it changing my life or things of that, or Facebook or this, I get a lot of dms and emails saying, gary B. I fuck with you. But, yo, fuck you, man. I don't have 25,000 to put into Twitter. I got $19 in Wells Fargo. And after reading enough of those, I'm like, well, guess What? I had $19 in Chase Bank 2. One day when I was 20, getting paid nothing. Building my dad's business for him, by the way, not for me. On Saturdays or Sundays or Friday afternoons, I had to sometimes step out of the store real quick and go to a estate sale or garage sale and buy something for 18 bucks and then sell it on eBay for 109. Because that was money to me. I said, you know what? I'm going to start making those videos. So I'm driving around Jersey in fancy cars or sometimes even with a driver. Garage sale. It. Why? Back to the beginning, because I wanted to make content for people that have $99 to their name. Because I know, and it's already happened. I did that in 17, 18, 19, before COVID There's not a month that goes by that I don't meet someone in the real world at a restaurant or at an airport where they don't literally make literally come up to me, open up their ebay app and show me they have $59,000 in there. And they're like, that's you, bro. I had nine. I was making eight bucks an hour at fucking Walmart. And you made that video about garage sales. And I've been flipping since. And this has made my family be able to go to good vacations. I can send my sister, my kid to private school because of you. Like, that's why I did. I don't give a fuck if a billionaire thinks I'm a schlub because I'm going to a garage sale. In fact, I'd prefer them to think I'm a schlub.

Yep, the inconvenient truth. Every time. Every time. Big 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. Like, 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 media. 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, everybody. We take so many things for granted in life. If you love what mix 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. Make. There might be a three star person on here. 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. So 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. Now, literally, me and you are cooking, we're growing. There's somebody listening right now who's never posted once, but they own three, three dry cleaners. And you know what they're like, you know, I want to be like Mick and Gary too. And they're literally going to 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 going to make their first video telling the story of how they built these three dry cleaners. And they're going to 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. And their ninth video they make is going to get 1 million views, lead to more business, and they're going to 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 guaranteed to get views and awareness. The content now is finding their audience. Let me give you a for instance. If I make a video. Ah, 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, like, I love spades. Like, I know how to sneak it in. You're never gonna catch me. I, you know, 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, they're, they're. Yeah, 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 with spades now, it's going to show up to 12 or 15 people and 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 now 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, Vee, you're wrong. You lost it. You're the worst. You just did three. If you do a hundred 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. You 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 gonna have to come back into the office. No, no.

By the way, me the company just to add color. Cause I went crazy on this one too.

Yes.

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 AI world. But 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% 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 going to 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.

Even if it's a five figure job. Here's where we're at. And you know this Bic. And boy do I have a funny feeling knowing your audience and what you talk about like got soft out here. And 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 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 when people live. When people. 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, it was 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. 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. You 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, right? My homies had one pair of sneakers. So did I, for three years.

Yep.

So what's happened is a combination of things. We become, unfortunately, too materialistic again. Motherfuckers had banged up used cars when our money was tight. When I was growing up, Nick, everybody's leasing new cars now. Yeah, Everybody's credit is all 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 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 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 day. The 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 race. I'm not pointing fucking fingers at a politician. I'm not even blaming my mom 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.

Yep.

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. 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. 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.

I mean physically.

Yeah.

When I get into deep political conversations with people, I'm like, move.

Right?

Like. Like. Like, you're allowed. Like, if you. You know, some of my friends, like, Sweden. I'm like, move to Sweden. Move to Stockholm. Move. Like. And I'm not saying, like, you don't love America. Get out. America. America is in. Has plenty of flaws.

Yeah.

News alert. So does everybody else.

Yep.

You know when people like Sweden, 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. And 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. Like, 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, because 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. 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 and now you have the ability to go back into the lion's den and try to pull Dad.