Mick Hunt: Marcus, when you started this journey, man, like, what was your because?

Dr. Marcus Collins: It’s because people didn’t think I could. People doubted me. And maybe even I doubted myself. It wasn’t about showing them that I could do it. But it was about

Mick Hunt: One of the quotes that’s deep with me this week is, if you wanna move people, you gotta understand what moves them. And as simple as that quote is, that’s also the genius of doctor Marcus Collins because I think a lot of times we take things for granted.

Dr. Marcus Collins: You know, we tend to mistake the obvious because it’s there. It’s right in front of us. The obvious thing about us is that

Mick Hunt: Culture isn’t something that’s bought into. It’s who people are or what your business is. And I would love for you to elaborate that.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Culture as a system of conventions and expectations that demarcate who we are and govern what people like

Podcast Intro: us do. Welcome to Mick Unplugged, where we ignite potential and fuel purpose. Get ready for raw insights, bold moves, and game changing conversations. Buckle up. Here’s Mick.

Mick Hunt: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Mick Unplugged. And today’s guest is an unstoppable force who’s transformed the way we think about marketing, branding, and culture. If you’ve ever wondered how to turn culture awareness into a strategic power, you’re in for a master class today, I promise you. Get ready to dive into the world where ideas spark action, authenticity leads to transformation, and the future is creating one meaningful story at a time. Please join me in welcoming the brilliant, the visionary, the dynamic, the guy that doesn’t know he’s helped me become the man that I am today, doctor Marcus Collins.

Marcus, how are you doing today, brother?

Dr. Marcus Collins: I am blessed and highly favored and so very grateful to be with you.

Mick Hunt: I am excited, man. You know, we were just chatting, like, literally just a few minutes ago on just what you mean to me, the person that you are, the things that you talk about and discuss, but more importantly, the action and thoughts that you give people, man. Like, I’ve been a huge fan of yours forever, so I’m honored to just share some time with you, bro.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Oh, that’s a blessing, man. Thank you so much. That makes 2 of us. Let’s do it.

Mick Hunt: You are a Michigan man. I’m not I’m not a Ohio State guy either,

Dr. Marcus Collins: but you’re a

Mick Hunt: Michigan man. Right? So I love to hear a little bit about just telling the story of Marcus Collins. For those that don’t know, most people do, but for those that don’t know, tell people why Marcus Collins is, like, one of my top three people in the world.

Dr. Marcus Collins: I wish I had the answer to that. But I tell you a little bit about who I am. Yeah. I’m a product of Detroit. Now I always start that way because I feel like Detroit was very influential in how I made sense of the world, how I framed the world.

Being a city that is predominantly black, but living in a world that straddled the fence of both me as a swimmer growing up, which wasn’t ton of black folks swimming. So I lived in 2 different worlds at the same time. And having a city like Detroit as the backdrop just always created unique frames for me. Say it’s a big city, but never thought of like as a New York and LA or even in Chicago. It was a tough city, but never thought of as sort of as gritty as I don’t, I don’t know.

I don’t want to be, I don’t want to be disparaging about the city, but it, you know, it’s, it’s, I was always sort of in the middle. And because of that, there’s always a chip on the city’s shoulder. And I feel like everybody from the city sort of bears that. I think that that sort of disposition followed me not only as a, as an adolescent coming of age, but as a college student coming out of college, starting a company, a music company, much to the shagrin of my parents, to going back to school to get an MBA, to having the audacity to say, I think I can work at apple, you know, to on the surface and see, like I had the credentials to be there then to then go run digital strategy for Beyonce then to then go into advertising and then to then be a professor and then to then write a book, like all these things, it just felt like, you know, no one thought that I could do those things, which made me feel like, oh, let me show you what’s up.

Mick Hunt: Yeah, man. You know, I I love that. And, you know, we’re gonna talk a lot about the things that you have going on. But, you know, I’ll make them plug. We talk about your because, that thing that’s deeper than your why, that passion that keeps you going.

And and from time to time, your because changes. But if I were to say, Marcus, when you started this journey, man, like, what was your because? What was that motivation, that drive, that must have that kept you going?

Dr. Marcus Collins: It’s because people didn’t think I could.

Podcast Intro: And I think maybe a

Dr. Marcus Collins: part of it, maybe I didn’t know if I could. I’ve always hoped for and wanted the most of myself. I wouldn’t say more of myself. I said the most of myself. I mean, if you asked me when I was in high school, I was gonna be the 5th member of Boyz II Men, And I thought that that was possible.

I thought it was legit possible. And my parents, particularly my mother was like, yo, you better go to school to be an engineer fam. Like this, this music delusion you have in your mind, like that’s not happening for you. You’re going to do this thing because it was logical. And I guess the part of me felt like, well, why should I abide by what is logical?

You know, I think that my, because is that because people doubted me and maybe even I doubt it myself, I wanted to it’s not only it wasn’t about showing them that I could do it, but it was about proving to myself that I could do it, I suppose.

Mick Hunt: That’s amazing, man. That’s amazing. And, you know, I told everybody that’s listening and watching when I did the intro, we’re in for a master class on culture because if there’s any person that is the voice, that’s the face, that’s the authority in culture, it is you. And I wanna talk about the book for the culture for a second because I don’t wanna say something sacrilegious so I’m not. It’s something that you know how with the bible.

Right? Like, you go and every day you can read passages and it hits you different every time and it’s something that that we do, as believers, do all the time. For the culture is, like, probably my number 2, where I can literally go in and find a quote, and that quote means something right now. And one of the quotes that’s deep with me this week is if you wanna move people, you gotta understand what moves them. And as simple as that quote is, that’s also the genius of doctor Marcus Collins because I think a lot of times we take things for granted.

Right? And so if you wanna move people, you gotta understand what moves them.

Dr. Marcus Collins: And I mean, I thank you for that. I think that, you know, it’s the obvious that gets us every time. A gentleman named, Duncan Watts wrote a book that essentially said the obvious simply isn’t obvious. So someone points it out to you. Once someone points out and you go, Oh man, totally.

Absolutely. I think that, you know, we tend to mistake the obvious because it’s there. It’s right in front of us. The obvious thing about us is that we know how influential people are. We know how influential culture is.

But yet we spend a fraction of our time thinking about how do we better understand people so that we can understand how they influence each other? How do we better understand culture? So it might be able to engage in such a way to get people to move. And for me, I was working in an industry advertising where all we talked about was culture. Get our ideas out in the culture.

What’s happening in culture. We had to move at the speed of culture. And I was saying this like multiple times a day. And when I realized that I didn’t know very much about culture at all, I knew it sort of intuitively and I knew it conceptually and intellectually, but I didn’t understand the underlying physics, the mechanisms that make culture work. And the more I came to understand it, the wider, the aperture of how I saw the world became.

I just became so illuminated in many ways. It was humbling because I realized I didn’t know much about anything, Which only if not, if anything, just sort of catalyzed curiosity. And writing the book to me was sort of a, a love letter of sorts to this exploration of culture. And it’s not a period at the end of it all. It’s sort of an ellipsis.

It’s like for people to continue to build to build on top of it because I feel like I built I built on top of those who came before me.

Mick Hunt: It’s amazing, man. And, you know, like, for me, leadership is my jam. Right? And so just like you, like, I’ve got multiple degrees in organizational leadership Yeah. And cultural leadership.

And another thing that fascinates me with with what you say and this is actually something that I teach, and you do it much more eloquently than I do. Culture isn’t something that’s bought into. It’s who people are or what your business is. And I would love for you to elaborate there because for all the business owners and c suite leaders or or even if you’re a solopreneur and at some point, you’re gonna have team. People talk about culture, but they talk about it like they’ve gotta buy in and you have to embrace it.

Like, no, you don’t. Like, if that’s your mindset that culture is something that you embrace or that you buy into, you’ve missed the boat, and culture is something you don’t have. Or I’m sorry. The culture you think you have is quite the opposite of the culture that really exists.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Amen. Amen. So I think about culture through a sociological lens.

Mick Hunt: When the

Dr. Marcus Collins: founding fathers of sociology and Mill Durkheim talks about culture as a system of conventions and expectations that demarcate who we are and govern what people like us do. And in the book, you know, I try to detail what those systems are. It’s identity, who we are, a shared, a shared way of seeing the world, and then a shared way of navigating the world, like a shared way of life. And then the way we express ourselves, a shared way of expression called cultural production. And the alchemy of those systems make up our culture.

And, you know, I try to prosecute this idea that our consumption behaviors and our behavioral adoption that happens in the marketplace out in the world is culturally mediated or culturally governed because of the way we culturally mediate, when we mediate the world through our cultural lenses into your point, organizational culture is the same system of conventions and expectations. They’re the same collection of cognitions and kinetics that govern how we act here. And the leadership may go, we have a great culture here. We do X, Y, and Z. And it’s like, well, is that really what’s true?

Because while you’re trying to get people to buy into sort of the policies you create, they are negotiating, constructing what people like them do. And we know this intuitively, like you started a new job. Hey, Nick, how do I do this thing over here? You go, well, you’re supposed to do this, but this is how everybody does it. That’s your culture, but everybody does.

That’s the culture that leaders of the organization make rules, but it’s the people who make culture and real leadership is We talk about it here at Ross. The leadership is the ability to influence without authority and leadership is about influencing without authority. And what’s the most influential force of human behavior culture. So those who are able to contribute to, engage in, move the culture forward, those are the people who are most likely to influence people, to move people forward.

Mick Hunt: I love it, brother. And that’s why I promise you for the culture, and I wanna talk about the necessity of that book in a moment. But but this conversation is why, genuinely, I am in this book multiple times per week because I’m always grabbing something. And in culture, you know, whether it’s societal culture, whether it’s business culture. Right?

Whether it’s something people don’t think about your household culture.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Yeah.

Mick Hunt: This book gives you everything because you’re not just talking about one aspect, like you were talking about culture in general. And one of the things that I think is really hot right now again, I can quote the book all day, bro. At least, this week, I’ve highlighted the things that I’m focused on. You said belonging is the ultimate currency.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Mhmm.

Mick Hunt: Belonging is the ultimate currency. I’d love for you to elaborate on that, brother.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Well, we are social animals by nature, as Aristotle would say. We are built to be in community. Our as social beings. So if you believe evolution, evolution anthropologists were argued that the reason why we were able to evolve and to sustain as a species, because we socialize, we cooperated that is deep in our brainstem and therefore for us, Trust and safety is predicated based on our belonging based on being a part of something, being with people, which is why we always try to find people like us. We’re homophilic we’re self loving we find people like us.

We feel safe in those numbers. So therefore being a part of a thing becomes the ultimate currency in life, because that means survival. The job of the brain is to make predictions about the future so that we increase our chances of surviving and survival is inextricably linked to being connected. Then connectivity means survival. There’s no currency greater than that.

And we’re just constantly just trying to find Us. We’re trying to bump into people like us. We’re just in everything we do from the way we present ourselves, the clothes we wear, the products that we buy, how we style our hair. If you have it, of course, you know, all, all the, you know, you know, it, you know, robot, the, all these things. And we’ll actually navigate towards people who seem to be like us.

I mean, I tell my students this all the time that when you were younger, you went to sleepaway camp and you find someone who’s from your hometown, you go, oh, you’re from Detroit, from Detroit too. Oh my goodness. Oh my God. Best friends. Right?

We would do this when we travel abroad. You could be in a foreign place. You hear nothing but foreign accents, accents. Until you hear an American accent, you go, where are you from? Someone goes, I’m from Chicago.

Like, I’m from Detroit, Midwest. What up?

Podcast Intro: And you

Dr. Marcus Collins: make, you immediately feel connected to that person. This is your brain saying your chances of survival are better by being with this person. And therefore, we connect with them. As social beings, there is nothing more important than to be connected. And we go to great, great lengths to do that very thing.

Mick Hunt: Man, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. We could do this, like, all week, bro. I could I could literally just pick your brain on you. Right?

It’s rare that I get the actual authority on what I I watch or or read the most. And so that again, I’m honored. So, you know, we’ve given folks some insights into what’s in the book. Mhmm. Which everybody needs to go get, and I’ll make sure there’s links to that.

And we’ll talk a little bit more about that too. But I would love to know what made Marcus say, I have to write a book. And not only that, but these are the actions. These are the the thought leadership points that need to go into this book. Because, bro, it’s it’s brilliant.

Like, it’s it’s like you captured everything again. Whether it’s in your your business, in your home, in society. Like, you have truly captured culture. Like, what made you say the world needs this?

Dr. Marcus Collins: You know, honestly, I did not think that at all. I had no intention of writing a book in any temporal sense. Nothing like in the near term at all. I got an email from an illiterate agent who saw a talk that I gave somewhere somewhere online. And he’s, he emailed me and said, Hey, I think you have a book in you.

And I was like, what? And when the email came through, I honestly thought it was one of those like ghost writing spam emails. They’re like, Hey, just dictate it. We’ll write the book for you. And no shade to them, but I just never would do that.

And I was like, just kind of ignored it. And then he emailed me again and said, Hey, like I love just 15 minutes of your time. I just think you have something interesting to say. And he caught me right at the right time. Cause we had just had our second daughter Ivy and I’m walking her in a stroller and I got a good half hour of time to walk her.

So like, I’ll take the call. So I was going to call. We talk and, you know, I’m like basically just grilling him about the industry. Cause I didn’t know very much about publishing at all. And we agreed to just write proposal.

No, no strings attached. We write a proposal. And honestly, when I hung up the phone, I just compartmentalize it somewhere in the back of my mind. So then I would do later in life. COVID happens and a close friend of mine passes very, very early, very early gentleman by the name of Marlowe Stoudemire.

He died March 24, 2020. And immediately it reminded me of a book I’d read years ago called die empty. And that book said that the most expensive real estate on the planet is the graveyard because that’s where ideas are buried that weren’t brought to fruition. Books weren’t written movies. Weren’t made albums weren’t recorded companies weren’t started because everyone’s waiting for the right time.

Well, you don’t have time, time you’re on borrowed time. And in the middle of the pandemic, my mortality just felt so tangible. And I was like, I’m gonna write this proposal. So I wrote the proposal, my agent liked it. I liked it.

He said, let’s pitch it. And I’m like, great. What’s the worst that can happen? Did they say no? And they said, yes.

And I was like, okay, cool. Great. Awesome. And we ended up getting a deal to write this book. And then I go, oh man, I don’t write a book now.

And the truth that matters and being totally honest, this is like totally trill. I wrote like 5,000 words and I go, I got nothing else to say. That’s it.

Mick Hunt: I got

Dr. Marcus Collins: nothing else to say. And I think I was on, I I was on the hook, contractually on the hook to write 85,000 words. And I go, just take your money back. Like, I can’t do this. Like, this is this is a mistake.

I’ve made a mistake here. And here’s where things got interesting for me is that I thought, okay, what am I what am I trying to say? What’s the argument I’m trying to say? I’m trying to say the culture is important. So many people have said this.

People a 1000000 times smarter than me have written that. People know that intuitively. But what can I bring to the discourse that’s unique? And I thought about it for awhile. And it dawned on me sort of serendipitously that those early scholars of sociology, which is where most of my, my academic rep repertoire sort of sits to those early scholars of sociology.

They studied culture by observing religion. And I go, oh, dude, I’m a church boy. Like I could, that’s a perspective I can have, you know? And, and, and as a marketer, I realized that we spend so much of our lexicon actually comes from the theology. We say, you know, need people to evangelize the brand.

We need people to convert over. It’s like, oh, this, this is all theological nomenclature. That is of the theory that culture was studied. And I happened to be a practitioner, so I could tell stories that I’ve actually done using this work. And it was like for, for good measure, You know, I’m a product of hip hop.

Like I’m a hip hop fan. That is a culture that to which I studied as a doctoral student. And that I know as a fan. And it was really the intersection of all those cylindrical circles. Like that’s the book I’m going to write a book that interrogates culture through a sociological lens framed through what we know of religion, theology, through a practitioner’s lens with a hip hop slant to it.

That’s the book.

Mick Hunt: That you just summed up exactly why I I read it almost every day. Like, literally, like, that That’s amazing. And I didn’t know that story. 5000 words and you had 80,000 more to go.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Man, I literally was like, I have nothing else to say. Like, there’s there’s nothing else. Like, get squeeze anything out of me. I’ve written down everything I thought I knew about this topic. And it wasn’t that my understanding was shallow.

It’s just that I did not have a voice to say it. I was regurgitating what the literature says as opposed to having a point of view. I think that that’s been one of the biggest learnings for me is that if we put things in the world, whether you write, you talk, you host a podcast, whatever the cultural production you create, it’s not enough to just to create. You have to create with the point of view that you have on the world. And it’s that point of view that people go, oh, I see myself in it.

And realize that not everybody’s gonna like it either. And that’s cool too. It ain’t for everybody, you know? And the idea is that I write from a place that is vulnerable and that is honest in hopes that people see my humanity in it, and they see their humanity as a result of it.

Mick Hunt: That’s amazing, brother. I love that completely. So shifting gears a little bit, you are also these are mixed words. Doctor Marcus is never gonna brag about himself like this. I’m gonna say it for him.

You are a marketing and branding genius. And no. I I mean that, man. I would love for you just to talk to the viewers and listeners, and we’re gonna talk to 2 different ones. So we’re gonna talk about the entrepreneur right now that is at the beginning of that journey, whether it’s 1 to 3 years.

What are some tips that you can give from a branding and marketing standpoint? And then I have a follow-up question.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Okay. For those entrepreneurs who are starting early in their career, 3 to 5 years, I would say this. You think that you cannot do marketing to Fidelity that you want to, because you don’t have the means or the resources. And I would say that is the biggest lie that you could tell yourself because every brand that we look at out in the world, they were once exactly where you are. Exactly where you are.

And they built themselves to that. And the best ones built themselves to that by being disciplined, being disciplined about who they are as a brand, which requires a little vocabulary lesson, if you will, I hate the word lesson. Let’s just say it requires some vocabulary, a Rosetta stone. Marketing is going to market. Like that’s what marketing is.

And I would argue that everybody, whether you have marketing your title or not, you are a marketer because you are going to market. You either bring your products to market. You bring yourself to market. If you’re looking for a job, you’re bringing ideas to market. If you write or create content, whatever the case may be, we’re all going to market.

Marketing is going to market. Right. And the market is people. We’re going to people in an effort to get people to adopt behavior. So then what is a brand?

We’ll brand historically for 4000 years brands were essentially just a Mark of ownership. We would Mark our cattle as a way of saying that this belongs to me. These are Collins, Kyle’s and Mark marked them as such. So did you know them? You can distinguish them from anybody else’s.

Cows, but brands have evolved to be much more that brands today. Aren’t just identifiers. They are signifiers. They represent something. They are vessels of meaning that conjure thoughts and feelings in the hearts and minds of people relative to a company, an institution, an organization, a product, or a person.

And I would say that brands mean something, but the strongest brands mean more than what they create. So if you are a razorblade if you sell razorblades, you go, my brand is the best selling razorblades. I go, great. Good luck with that. But it’s the brands that transcend the category, that transcend the product and value propositions.

Those brands mean more, and therefore, they are more meaningful. They are more full of meaning, and people find themselves investing themselves in it. You could do that today, right now. You don’t need a $1,000,000 budget to do this. You have to first identify what do I believe now?

What do I create? But what do I believe? How do I see the world? And then you use all the resources at your disposal to go preach the gospel. Now you’re not trying to get on super bowls, the super bowl stage and preach your gospel.

No, no, no. Go door to door, knock door to door person to person winning over a consumer a day, converting 1 a day. Arbitrarily speaking that allows you to not only do hand to hand combat, but also learn about how people respond to your message. Nike doesn’t have that luxury. Nike has to convert 1,000,000 a day.

If not, it’s a failure. Right? That’s the cross that they’re bear. That’s the burden that they bear by having the success they have. The burden you bear is far lower.

A consumer a day. A viewer a day. One engagement a day. And you do this not by preaching the gospel about how sharp your razor is or how fast your car goes, but rather about what you believe and how you see the world. And people who believe the world the way you do, see the world the way you do go, that’s my brand.

Then they go tell other people about you. Not because they love you so much, but because they love their people. And that’s a powerful place to be.

Mick Hunt: See, that’s why I love it, man. Like, everything you do is in simple, actionable terms.

Dr. Marcus Collins: That’s only because I’m a simple guy. That’s it. It’s because I’m just a simple guy. Okay.

Mick Hunt: I’m right there with you. That’s why we connect so well.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Yes, sir.

Mick Hunt: So now let’s talk about the established business.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Mhmm.

Mick Hunt: And they’re at this point. Right? It’s going to end of 24, beginning of 25. The world is vastly different. And what you did yesterday probably doesn’t work today because buyers are evolving.

And, you know, I tell people, I’m not saying buyers are getting younger. I’m just saying buyers are evolving. My mother, who a couple of years ago is like, there is no way I’m putting my checking account or credit card online or anything. Ask my mom for a check or some cash right now. And she will and my mom is a preacher.

She will give you a look that will almost biblically cuss you out. Right? But so so for that that business now, how does marketing and branding help them to your terminology starting to transcend a little bit?

Dr. Marcus Collins: So what we see is an evolution of media. And the media is important because the media has meaning embedded in it. And as media evolves, we have to evolve with it. We have to make sure that we’re giving the right message in the right context. That’s great.

But what I would tell those established brands that here’s the benefit. That while yes, things have changed 1000%. But you know what hasn’t changed very much? Us. Humanity.

So we have to start by understanding humanity. The underlying physics of what it means to be human. Those things change very, very, very, very, very slowly. If we start with the understanding of who people are not customers, not voters, not subscribers because that’s their actions, it’s not who they are But understanding who people are and engage them as such We could then say, all right, where are the best places to do that based upon what that media means? It’s like this.

It’s like, you know, I feel totally licensed telling Eddie Murphy jokes at the bar with my friends. Right?

Mick Hunt: Right.

Dr. Marcus Collins: They get it. They’re totally fine with it. But I would never tell those jokes in the church sanctuary. Ever. Even with the exact same friends.

Why? Because that environment, that situation does not lend itself culturally to be acceptable. And the same jokes resonate. But the environment makes it different. So the question becomes then, what resonates with these people?

A, these people who I’m trying to engage. And then what are the best environments in which I can do that? And then that’s when we look at the evolving media landscape to say, okay, where should I be to do that thing? Because every surface area is is media.

Mick Hunt: Mhmm. Amazing. So then this was my follow-up question.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Okay.

Mick Hunt: And it’s something and, you know, we share the same publicist. Right? You get 90% of her time, I get 10, but

Dr. Marcus Collins: it that’s okay. I wish.

Mick Hunt: Shout out to Leverage with PR. Yeah. That’s great. I have this thing because the last 2 years, in my mind, I have figured out PR is more important than marketing. I’m not saying marketing is not important.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Mhmm.

Mick Hunt: Marketing is still up there, but in my mind, the relationship aspect and, again, what you just said, the humanity aspect, in my mind is more important than marketing. I would love for Marcus to you can counter that, however. And I know you you didn’t know I was gonna say that, so I’d love to to catch you.

Dr. Marcus Collins: I would push on it just a little bit. I would say that marketing without public relations is shallow. Correct. And so to your point, like, public relations is a discipline that’s about nurturing, nourishing and grooming the relationship between an entity and the public. It’s about how do we influence shape and create interventions that inform the public zeitgeist.

Right. The collective mindset of the people. And I would say that if you have really good PR. Right. You have really good relationship with the public.

But you don’t go to market. You never get a chance to benefit from that goodwill. Right? If we define marketing as going to market, that it rec going to market is a necessity to realize the benefit that comes from PR. But if you go to market with a product, but you have no relationship with the public, the chances of your marketing winning is pretty is pretty slim.

Right? So the idea is that these things are are they are they work in concert together. Right? You know, you call it earned media. You call it, you know, paid media.

You know, I I I’d say the idea here is that they are, you know, they call it, you know, you have, whether you are left wing or white right wing, it’s all one bird. You know? And the idea here is that PR and marketing going to market, they work in concert in an effort to help you soar.

Mick Hunt: Marcus, bro. Alright.

Dr. Marcus Collins: I I

Mick Hunt: appreciate the pushback.

Dr. Marcus Collins: But, yeah, I I can the spirit of what you’re getting at. I I told you the spirit. Instead, you could have the best product. You can have a very reasonable price. You have all the right distribution.

What we call place and you can have the really great promotions. The marketing communications may be spot on, but if you are not engaging with the public or if the frame in which the public translates you as a brand, as a person, as an entity, as an organization, as an institution, if those things aren’t congruent, then all that going to market is for not.

Mick Hunt: Agree. And I tell people and the listeners and viewers have heard this before too. Like, I always say the difference for marketing PR for me is this. If I have a database, an email list, whatever you wanna call it, an outreach of a 1000 people, marketing keeps me in front of those same 1,000 people.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Yep.

Mick Hunt: And human nature at some point, I have a 1,000 today, next month is 900. And then 2 months later, it’s 750. Just because the course of who we are. Right? Like, you’re gonna unsubscribe.

You’re gonna oversaturate. Well, in order to prevent that, that’s where PR becomes important. And that’s why I say, I’m not saying marketing is not important. But for me, like, PR helps grow that visibility so that you have more to market to. Yeah.

You were saying the

Dr. Marcus Collins: exact And and I think that that the idea is that if we think about our going to market less about how do we sell things, cram things on people’s throats, but instead, how do we service people? I think we think of it that way we go, Oh, but I’m in the relationship business then.

Mick Hunt: Yeah.

Dr. Marcus Collins: That my marketing is in service. I’m going to market in service of people. And therefore the relationship I have with the public becomes tantamount to my ability to serve them. When those two things feel like they’re of the same spirit, they’re of the same elk, and there is no bifurcation between the 2. And now when you’re when you’re there, now you’re in lofty places.

Mick Hunt: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Alright, Marcus. We’re gonna get to my favorite part of the show, rapid fire

Dr. Marcus Collins: Okay.

Mick Hunt: With doctor Marcus Collins. Alright. You are a hip hop guru. Your top 5 hip hop artists are.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Oh, of all time?

Mick Hunt: All time.

Dr. Marcus Collins: No particular order. Tribe Called Quest, Redman, Jay z, Andre 3000. And I might get flack for this, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it. Kanye West. Old Kanye.

Not just new Kanye. Old Kanye.

Mick Hunt: Hip hop Kanye.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Exactly. Exactly.

Mick Hunt: Alright. I like that. I like that. I might have thrown LL in there somewhere.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Yeah. He’s he’s in the path now.

Mick Hunt: But I can only give you 5.

Dr. Marcus Collins: There’s my 5. Put my 5.

Mick Hunt: K. Top 3 favorite hip hop songs. Meaning, like, if you gotta just get ready, what are the 3 songs that are in that rotation? Oof.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Oof. Scenario by Tribe Called Quest. Yep. They probably hate that I say this, but Me, Myself, and I by De La Soul because they hate that song themselves, but Me, Myself, and I just kinda talks to me. And, oh, man.

A part of me I guess I would say I guess I would say Flashing Lights, Kanye West. Okay.

Mick Hunt: It it I would not have guessed that from working.

Dr. Marcus Collins: And an honorable mention, honestly, would probably be I wonder by Kanye West.

Mick Hunt: Okay. Alright. I dig it. Yeah. I dig it.

For the business, the family that’s looking to I don’t even wanna say improve culture, but just start to really focus on culture.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Mhmm.

Mick Hunt: What’s 3 tips you have for them?

Dr. Marcus Collins: Start with what do you believe? Who are you? How do you see the world? And then find the people who see the world the way you do. These are your collective of the willing.

People who believe also. And then preach the gospel to them. And what will happen is they’ll go, finally, someone said it. Man, I’ve been feeling this way for ever. I thought I was the only one.

And they’ll take your messaging, your branding, all your things that you put out in the world, and they’ll use them to express their own identity as their own identity project. And it will propagate into the population. They’ll tell other people about you. Not because they love you so much, but because they love their friends. And it’ll come with a level of credence that you can never buy.

That’s the reverberating network effects of culture.

Mick Hunt: Amazing. Amazing. Alright. Last rapid fire question.

Dr. Marcus Collins: You’re from Detroit. Yes, sir.

Mick Hunt: How many times a day do you say, what up, though?

Dr. Marcus Collins: Almost every salutation. Everyone’s just like, what up, though? What up, fam?

Podcast Intro: What up, dude? This is what we do. This is what we do.

Dr. Marcus Collins: I love it.

Mick Hunt: But, like, you you know, so earlier you were saying someone with an American accent. Right? Like, where are you from? You never have to worry about that with anyone from Detroit.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Never. Soon as someone say, what up, dude? It’s like, are you from the d?

Mick Hunt: Right.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Just like if you’re from Philly, someone says, that John, you go, oh, you’re a Philly guy. Like, or if you’re if you’re someone’s like, what up, son? You’re New York. Like, we’re just these these lexicons. It’s just so they’re so telling of who we are.

It’s really powerful.

Mick Hunt: Yeah. Hey. So do you know how you can tell when someone’s from California?

Dr. Marcus Collins: What up, because? I don’t know.

Mick Hunt: No. Don’t worry. They’ll tell you. That that’s for that’s for my wife and daughter-in-law right there. I tell that joke part time in New York too.

Right. Right. Alright. So before we get into where people can find and follow you, man, like, I just have to give you a shout out for what I’m gonna say is the best merchandise in the world with for the culture.

Dr. Marcus Collins: I was looking at your merch being really impressed, by the way.

Mick Hunt: No. No. No. No. No.

I don’t have a deck of cards though, bro. Like, the moment I saw a deck of cards, I was like, oh, that’s my dude. Yeah. And you’re always adding something to the to the merch site too. So it’s it’s not one of those things where you view it today, and it’s the same thing a couple of months down the road.

Like, it’s like, oh, he’s added this.

Dr. Marcus Collins: You know?

Mick Hunt: It’s Now we got a a letterman’s jacket.

Dr. Marcus Collins: That’s right.

Mick Hunt: Right. Right. I’m grateful

Dr. Marcus Collins: for that. And it’s, you know, it’s it’s been informed by the marketplace. You know? Like, When we put things in the world, we’re in discourse with the market. And they’re saying things back to us.

And we can decide to remain in discourse or just fade away. And what I realized is when I was out in the world talking about the book, people get the ideas intellectually, but they need just one sort of push to get them to apply it. I was like, oh, let’s use some playing cards. Like let’s do that. Like that way, they, they, the questions I would ask them, they can ask themselves.

And they can use that to a way to workshop those ideas internally. It’s like, oh, that’s what we got to do. And I thought about, you know, it was like freezing cold here in Michigan. And I was like, man, I remember back in the day, I used to love my letterman jacket. I used to wear it in high school.

I was like, actually my favorite jackets have always been Letterman’s. Like when I applied Sigma, my Letterman jacket, I wore it all the time. I was like, I don’t have a Letterman jacket. I was like, we need a Letterman jacket for For the Culture. We gotta do this.

Mick Hunt: Yep. And so I’m actually gonna buy some. I’m gonna I’m gonna go on so for the Mick, Unplugged fam, the first how many letter I should get what? 5 Letterman jackets?

Dr. Marcus Collins: I mean, that’s very, very kind of you.

Mick Hunt: Alright. I’m gonna order 5 Letterman jackets. I’m gonna get 10 copies of the book. So the first five that messaged me FTC letterman jacket. Yeah.

The next 5 that do for the culture or the next 10 that do for the culture get a book. So I’m a go ahead online and do that now. But just so you know, and I’m gonna send you a picture or video or something. Thanksgiving, you’re gonna see the playing cards out because spades happen at my house on Thanksgiving. My house is where all the fam comes in.

I’m gonna play a deck of cards for you.

Dr. Marcus Collins: I’m I’m super, super grateful. Truly. This has been a pleasure.

Mick Hunt: We should do it again.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Yo, fam. Well, why are we playing games? Absolutely. But this time, I wanna interview you.

Mick Hunt: Consider it done.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Done.

Mick Hunt: Consider it done. Alright. So where can people follow and find doctor Marcus Collins?

Dr. Marcus Collins: Across all the social channels, I go by at marktothec, m a r c t o t h e c, or marktothec.com, or you just Google doctor Marcus Collins? I think the I think the SEO has been kind to me, so it might show up.

Mick Hunt: You know, when somebody says just Google me, you know they’re that guy. No. No doubt. Just just Google me. I’m there.

Brother, I appreciate you more than you know. Like I said, this means the world to me to have someone that I genuinely look up to that is as real, authentic, and honest as they come. From the bottom of my soul, I appreciate you.

Dr. Marcus Collins: Grateful for you, man. Looking forward to next time.

Mick Hunt: You got it. And for all the viewers and listeners, remember, your Because is your superpower. Go unleash it.

Podcast Outro: Thank you for tuning in to Mick Unplugged. Keep pushing your limits, embracing your purpose, and chasing greatness. Until next time. Stay unstoppable.