Mark Metry Show Notes

“Many Founders should adopt Mark Metry’s ‘limits don’t exist’ mindset. It reminds me of Elon Musk.”

– Huffington Post

Mark Metry is the host of iTunes Top Charts podcast, Humans 2.0. Mark’s show features innovative and talented guests like Jay Samit, Neil Patel, and David Meltzer to educate others, change their lives, and upgrade to the Human version 2.0 that is inside each of us.

Prior to creating the Humans 2.0 Podcast, Mark was the founder and creative director of PPMC, started in 2013, the #1 Pixelmon Minecraft server in the world. As creative director, Mark grew the company’s website to reach over 10 million users and 10,000 registered premium members.

Mark founded and operating VU Dream (started in Dec. 2016), a growing and innovative virtual and augmented reality marketing & advertising agency based in Boston.

– Mark is Quora’s Top Writer 2018

Most passionate about

• I spend about 80% of my time running ViewDream, a growth agency for virtual and augmented reality companies around the world. The marketing world is very confusing, and with the VR industry, it’s even more confusing because the target audience are not normal people. These are people who are super interested in buying VR headsets or already have VR headsets, and we help the companies connect with their audience and really grow their businesses online.
• On the other side of that, I host a podcast called Humans 2.0, which I like to think of as a technological self development podcast where I talk with entrepreneurs, different leaders and impactful people that do amazing things in this world. It’s all about upgrading to the next level of human experience and I learn a lot from this podcast.
• My primary focus is in the VR industry and things are picking up. The world is going towards mainstream adoption of VR. Right now, we are at the early adoption stage and my agency is growing. The plan is to continue growing with the industry, so when VR hits the mainstream, whether it will be by 2020, 2022, or 2025, my agency, as well as my podcast, will be there and will have a major part of the market.

Who are Mark’s customers?

• Our customers are virtual and augmented reality startups, like VR games companies, a company that is trying to be like YMCA Virtual Reality, another startup from south Korea that is more a lab and deals with motion sickness and eye screening. So, we help small and medium sized VR and AR teams that are struggling and need help to grow.

Mark’s best advice about approaching customers

• Competition today is very difficult and I think an entrepreneur that wants to succeed should speak to the customers and potential clients with the utmost respect and apply empathy to their situation.
• You should be very specific in what you do. You should do what you are the best in doing and really hone in with that.

Biggest failure with a customer

• A few months ago, we got fired by one of our clients; that was the first time that ever happened. At first, it was kind of hard because it was a new experience, but after getting some feedback we were trying to break it down, understand what they wanted, what we did, and what we didn’t do, in order to really learn from that. I think failure is awesome, because it’s a progression of growth and for success, but it’s not if you don’t learn from that.
• The biggest thing that I learned from this experience and this set the standard for my agency later on, is the importance of communication. I think that miscommunication causes 90% of problems between people, especially with technology these days. We didn’t provide our customer with the proper information.

Biggest success due to the right customer approach

• My agency has an Instagram account and we post daily VR content. A few months ago we got a message from one of our followers that asked some questions and I answered. And two weeks later I got an email from him; he is the CEO of a medium/large virtual reality company. He ended up hiring my team.
• It was the classic way of using content in the website to help us set the standard for everything else we do. Give without any expectations of getting anything in return.

Recommendation of a tool for customer focus, marketing, or sales:

• The one tool that really enables sharing and producing valuable content is a totally free tool called Hemingway Editor.

Recommendation of a person that impacted Mark’s customers’ success

• The person that taught me the most about marketing, not only to get people to see your message, but also what you should do afterward. He ended up coming to my podcast, Neil Patel.

Mark’s key success factor

• I thought about this a lot recently. The term that we hear a lot, “fear of failure”; I honestly don’t think I have it. And the main reason I think I don’t have it is that since I was in mid to high school, during the main years of school, between the ages 10 to 17, I got pretty bad grades. I don’t think I failed any classes, but I wasn’t a good student. I was actually trying… that was the sad part; I already perceived failure. But when I got to business, I didn’t even think of failure. And that’s something that allowed me to succeed.

Mark’s Mountain

Since we believe that the best way for entrepreneurs to get a fast, big, and sustainable success is by leading your (new) market category, and the entire entrepreneurial journey reminds me of mountaineering, or conquering the mountain; I want to ask you if there is a mountain you dream of climbing or a mountain you have already climbed?

• I think all of us, deep down, love mountains; because they resemble something. Personally, I have never climbed a real mountain; I definitely want to, I don’t know which one.
• Probably the biggest mountain that I climbed, and I want to take it a bit personally, two years ago I faced a pretty serious depression and anxiety. I think that the main cause was that I didn’t follow the life path that I was built for, and instead I tried to live another person’s life.
• Really climbing that mountain for me has pushed my own personal life to greatness. Even though I did very successful things, I never thought of myself as successful. I never thought of myself as a good person.
• Climbing that mountain showed me another way and it totally changed my life. I started to be more positive and I started to caring more about other people.
• I would say that’s probably the biggest mountain that I have climbed and I haven’t looked back ever since.

The best way to connect with Mark

• Mark’s Podcast Website
• Mark’s Podcast Humans 2.0 on iTunes
• Mark’s agency site
• LinkedIn
• If you want to take a look at my day to day, check out My Instagram stories
• Email: [email protected]

Recommended Tools

• Hemingway Editor – Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear. The app highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors; if you see a yellow sentence, shorten or split it.

More resources for Entrepreneurs

1. Don’t Miss – Customer Focus Strategy & Execution: Market Analysis for Fundraising
2. Hayut Yogev’s Latest post: The three free, most practical steps to researching and locating your market
3. Former interview: With Gordon Tredgold: “No matter how good a product you think you have, you still need to reach out to the client. If you don’t do that, you leave business on the table”