Lessons - The PR Playbook That Built Brands for Kevin Hart, Cardi B and the Kardashians | Luke Lintz - HighKey Enterprises CEO (100M+ Followers Grown)

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In this lessons episode, discover how strategic PR builds credibility beyond social media verification.

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Understand why credible associations and media coverage strengthen a personal brand, explore how podcasts can become powerful client acquisition funnels, and uncover how demonstrating results builds trust and converts relationships into long-term business.

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How you sort of grew the business was you did the giveaway that made money, but it's super labor intensive.

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And that was like, that was kind of not high ticket.

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I mean, it could be high ticket.

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Six grand could be high ticket, depending on what else you sell.

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And then you took the customers from that, and then you moved them into like a recurring revenue retainer model, right?

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And then, I mean, that's actually, I think, something that most service-based businesses should focus on, like a retainer-based model.

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But it seems like a lot of agencies still don't get it right.

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I feel like they're still very project-based or...

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their retainers.

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I'm curious how you structure your retainers and why you've built a successful business around a retainer model.

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When I've worked with a lot of agencies that seem to, and maybe it's the quality of the service you deliver because I've worked a lot of PR agencies and just agencies in general and, and,

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I honestly find like the retainer is too expensive for what I'm getting out of it.

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Or even with like PR, they're like, it could be five grand, it could be 20 grand a month, but then there's like no guarantee that I'm even going to get anything.

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And when I do get stuff, I feel like it's like bullshit media placement.

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So what is like, I mean, what are the issues in your industry and why do you stand out so much?

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Yeah, so when you're starting up an agency that's a retainer model, I'm just going to speak from like our agency.

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So like if you're going to start up like a social media agency or any type of marketing agency,

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One of the biggest levers is like the price point that you're at based off the service that you're delivering.

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So you have an option.

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You could be the lowest in the market, the cheapest.

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You could be middle in the market, somewhere in between.

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Or you could be the highest price in the market.

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So the only one of those three options that give you zero benefit is being right in the middle.

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Because you're going to get outpriced by the lowest in the market and then you're not going to have enough margin to actually pay for good staff and then all of the things that increase your hard costs to deliver more value.

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So the economy wants to spend money, then they'll go to the premium.

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Exactly.

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Okay.

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Exactly.

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And so basically we were choosing between the lowest cost option and the highest cost.

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And what we want to do is we want to be working with constantly the highest level individuals because...

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They're the most enjoyable to work with.

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They don't complain about their bills.

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They want the highest value, the best experience.

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So they're willing to pay for it.

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And working with the highest level individuals you actually learn from.

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And I wanted to learn from my clients because that's an amazing thing.

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And being friends with the clients is awesome.

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And do you think that like when you, when the, now the services you actually sell are PR, uh, social media, um, do you, and then you do the giveaways.

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What people, I mean, actually, let me say this differently.

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Yeah.

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Is PR for every business owner?

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Do you feel like every business owner should be engaging in PR or are there certain people where it's not useful for them?

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Because I think there's actually, there's a, what was it?

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A Bill Gates quote?

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I think so that you said like, if I had, I was down to my last dollar, then I would spend it on PR.

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He's talking about the power of PR.

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I think you said this quote a few times, but do you believe that to be true?

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I think every single business owner can have some level of PR.

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I don't think every business owner needs to be constantly featured in the media, constantly featured in press, TV.

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But we've gone the direction of practically every single one of the packages that we sell.

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We put a little bit of press on it.

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So getting them featured in some sort of media.

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Because at the end of the day, every single person is searching up on Google before making a purchasing decision.

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long run.

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Do you feel like traditional PR is starting to die compared to social media?

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For sure.

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Yeah, 100%.

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Traditional PR is on the steep decline.

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When you say PR, where are you putting people?

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Are you putting people in Forbes or Inc or on MSNBC?

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Where are you actually putting people where it still makes sense?

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Or are you trying to get them on podcasts and shit like new media?

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Yeah,

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So PR is a very broad term.

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Exactly.

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It encompasses even newspapers, billboards.

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It encompasses pretty much every level of marketing.

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It's just the aspect of leveling up somebody's brand and presence, pretty much physical and digital.

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What we focus on is new age media for the most part.

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So the only type of old age media that we focus on is digital-based publications.

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Yeah.

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where people are getting only featured in digital media that ranks on Google.

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But then outside of that, it's like working on getting them featured in podcasts.

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Sometimes we're working on influencer collaborations, which is like PR related.

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Because I think that even in new media, people don't know really how to capitalize on PR.

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And like for somebody who's like a business owner out there right now, somebody who's listening and they want to like...

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figure out how to get started in PR, should they focus on just getting placements first?

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Or should they figure out kind of like what you alluded to before?

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They should figure out like the funnel of how they're going to use that PR.

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Yeah, it's a good question.

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It depends where they're at in business, like if they're just starting out or if they're currently making money.

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An easy way to start with like press is just going and doing press syndications for your business.

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So basically this is where you go on to like access wire, globe and news wire.

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There's tons of press indications where you can go on.

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You write up basically, basically a press release.

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And so this is like a, a one page outline of a major updating your business.

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If you acquired another business, if you are maybe just starting your business, released a new product line, this is where you're running from the perspective of your own business.

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You,

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go on to access wire globa newswire there's tons of them but the people actually read that what it does is it ranks on google underneath your name okay and so that's the primary thing we don't really do press for the purposes of gaining a huge new audience from the publications that they're being featured on it's mainly from the perspective that ranks on google and how amazing that is when anybody's searching up their name for that additional authority so it's like social proof basically it's social proof they like

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You've done something impressive.

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When I Google your name, which is like your new resume, this is what comes up.

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And when you think about social media versus, so if I'm trying to create social proof around somebody and thought leadership around somebody,

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They have all their socials.

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If I Google their name, they're going to have a couple articles around them.

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But now anybody can pay for verification.

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So what is the signal that I'm cool and noteworthy and actually know what I'm talking about?

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I'm asking that because now I don't know what to look for when I'm bringing on podcasts, guys.

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Because it's hard when somebody is verified across all platforms.

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It seems like everybody now is very good at becoming a thought leader and recognized online.

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So...

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outside of Wikipedia, which seems to be like the last place that nobody can sort of like growth hack their way in.

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I'm sure there's ways to do it anyways.

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It seems like everybody seems famous online now if they're focused on it.

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So where do people, that being said, if I was a client,

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And I said, listen, I want to really stand out, not just pay whatever the seven bucks a month for Instagram verification or whatever it is.

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I want to really stand out.

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What do I have to do so that I look better than everyone else who's paying for verifications now?

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Yeah.

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So one way is...

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This is kind of like a hack for growing any brand.

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It's the associations with credible figures.

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And so you can't really fake a constant association with celebrities or leaders within your industry.

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And so if you're going on to somebody's Instagram page and you see that they're associated with other credible figures, that's high-level entrepreneurs, celebrities, or anything like that, that's an indicator that you can't really fake.

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So then if I was going to, yeah, but so if I'm a business leader and I want to become more of like a thought leader or whatever, is there a strategy that you would tell, is it starting a podcast and interviewing people?

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Like what's the strategy that I would have to do?

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Yeah, well, the podcast is the best way to... Like some sort of interview style.

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Yeah, a podcast is amazing.

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It's actually the first way that we got clients.

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And this is for any single social media agency or marketing agency.

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It's literally the best sales funnel out there.

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It should be legal, pretty much.

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Basically, what you do is you partner with a high-level podcast or you do your own podcast.

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It's easier if you partner with already established podcasts.

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And you say, listen, I'm going to give you an affiliate cut if you basically refer over guests to me.

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But you don't have to refer over guests until we do services for you for free.

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And you see the results that we get.

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So this is exactly what we did.

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This is how we got our first clients.

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I'm probably this.

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This is how we got our first clients.

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Yeah.

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This is how we got our first clients is that we partnered with this one podcast.

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that was already established.

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We did all of his services for an extremely discount rate, managed all of his channels.

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After two months, he saw the results that we did.

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He's like, you guys are great.

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And then we're like, you should start referring us over to your podcast guests.

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Then we booked podcast guests onto his podcast that we knew would be good clients.

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And we gave him a script to say at the end of the podcast.

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So he'd basically go through an entire podcast.

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And then at the end of the podcast, they would close down the recordings.

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And then they would just talk one-on-one.

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Of course.

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All the time.

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as you always do yeah and so they would talk one-on-one and always the podcast guests would bring up and be like hey i saw your instagram like it's pretty good he's like matter of fact like i have a team that runs it i'd love to give you their information booked up a call with us and we closed them

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That's actually how we got some of our best.

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We have retainer clients that are paying us to this day that were from that funnel.

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Because, I mean, it's so funny that that conversation about who do you work with or like who puts this all together or who runs your social.

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I actually probably have that conversation with like 95 percent of the guests that come on because they're all interested.

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Right.

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Especially if especially if you've built something significant.

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And they're like, OK, so like I take a look at your social, you're putting out X amount of clips per day.

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Oh, look at like I love the production value of your show.

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Like who does this for you?

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And I think that's actually that's a very smart strategy.

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We started we're going to start doing this in the aesthetics industry where I'm starting up aesthetics based podcasts that I'm just going to invite on our ideal clients onto the podcast.

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Thanks for tuning in.

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If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode.

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And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode.

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See you in the next one.