IAM2376 – CEO Develops a Unique Strategy in Social Media Marketing and Branding

Luke Lintz is a 25-year-old dynamic entrepreneur and CEO of HighKey Enterprises, specializing in social media management for the aesthetics and cosmetics industries.

Luke is known for his relentless work ethic and innovative strategies in the digital marketing space, having worked with A-list celebrities like Kevin Hart, Cardi B, and Nicki Minaj.

Luke’s business evolved as they began focusing on social media marketing and branding. Around 2018-2019, they developed a unique strategy called HighKey Clout.

Eventually, the business shifted focus toward the aesthetics, wellness, and medical spaces, narrowing down its target market and seeing great success with this approach over the past year.

He emphasizes that business success often involves losing money and having a risk appetite is crucial.

Luke also believes in leading by example and showing discipline in business and personal life, which has helped him grow as a leader.

He recommends listing all the tasks an entrepreneur does, ranking them by what they like and dislike, and then outsourcing tasks that don't align with their strengths or interests.

Luke highlights the importance of being a well-rounded individual and setting a positive example for others.

LinkedIn: Luke Lintz

Instagram: lukelintz

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Transcription:

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Luke Lintz Teaser 00:00

So everybody that we're following on high key clout are giveaway sponsors who are helping pay for the giveaway and then in return they're gaining a ton of followers from these celebrities.

And so it's like a win, win, win situation. The followers of the celebrity is able to win because they have a chance to win these massive prizes.

The celebrity wins because we pay them a massive amount up front. The giveaway sponsors win because they gain a ton of followers. So it was a great business model.

Intro 00:28

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:56

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have an awesome guest on the show today. I have Luke Lintz. Luke, excited to have you on the show.

Luke Lintz 01:03

Thanks for having me here.

Gresham Harkless 01:04

Yes, I'm super excited to have you on. Luke is doing so many awesome things that I'm looking forward to drilling in and having a phenomenal conversation.

But of course, before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Luke so you can hear about some of those awesome things.

And Luke is a dynamic entrepreneur and a CEO of HighKey Enterprises LLC, a premier digital branding agency specializing in social media management for the aesthetics and cosmetic industries.

At just 25 years old, Luke has established himself as a leader in his field, driving innovative strategies to help brands and celebrities elevate their online presence.

And known for his relentless work ethic and forward thinking mindset. Luke oversees a diverse portfolio of ventures under the HighKey brand including HighKey Agency.

HighKey Clout and his partnerships with high profile celebrities and businesses have garnered widespread recognition, positioning HighKey as a trailblazer in the digital marketing space.

Standing at 6’4 with an athletic build, Luke's discipline extends beyond his business pursuits to his personal life. And he's based in Puerto Rico.

Luke leverages the island's strategic advantage for both lifestyle and business growth, exploring the opportunities offered under Act 64 Tax Optimization.

And one of the really cool things I heard about Luke is that he started his entrepreneurial journey at the age of 16 with his drop shipping business where he was selling wireless headphones, which I think is super awesome to have that entrepreneurial blood in his vein.

He's partnered with over 100 A list celebrities, including Kevin Hart, Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, the Kardashians, and so on and so forth.

And he also has over 1 million followers on Instagram. So, Luke, you're doing awesome things. I can see a little bit of that relentless work ethic. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Luke Lintz 02:39

I am, I am. I'm really looking forward to giving a ton of value more than anything else. And I appreciate that intro. That was very generous.

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Gresham Harkless 02:47

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I always say it's a lot easier to read the bio and read the introduction rather than probably do all the work.

So I guess let me hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. Let's rewind the clock.

Hear a little bit more on how you got started, what led you to all the awesome work you've been able to do.

Luke Lintz 03:02

I never really saw myself as an entrepreneur, really, when I was growing up, I never thought I was going to become an entrepreneur or business owner. I really thought I was actually going to become an accountant in high school.

But after I started getting into business, I started looking back at my younger years and realized a lot of things that I did was entrepreneurial. It was just all about making money.

For me, it was only about getting that bread. And so when I was in grade two, I would actually take my little brother's Pokemon cards and sell them to other kids.

And so I like, had like a Pokemon dealership going on pretty much. And then later on in grade eight, I wanted some extra money.

And so I would pair up with my brother and we would go on to Kijiji, which is basically the Canadian version of Craigslist.

And we would buy and sell bikes and TVs and then resell them, fix them up if they were needed, and then resell them for like a two times, three times profit.

I never saw that as entrepreneurial when I was doing it. I literally just saw that as, you know, trying to do anything to make money at the time and ultimately to make money to have more freedom and then to get out of the current situation that I'm in.

So that was kind of the childhood story. And so when I was in high school, I was constantly brainstorming ideas with my older brother and his friends.

And what happened is there was one summer we were on a long walk and we were always doing these things.

We were going on walks just to brainstorm ideas. It was a very unique thing that we did. And this one time, dropshipping got brought up. This is the summer of 2016.

And we went back, we researched dropshipping a ton. Now I'm like, wow, this seems like a no brainer.

All we need is a good product. And so we thought about wireless earbuds. And so at the time there was no wireless earbuds on the market.

Nothing in North America. There was one pair of wireless earbuds being sold in the UK and so we started doing research on completely wireless earbuds.

And there was one product on Alibaba, which is a Chinese wholesaling website. And we found this one product, ordered a sample, and it wasn't that good, but it was good enough to sell.

So we were like, okay, well let's start this journey. And so we, we put together all of our money that we had at the time, bulk purchased these wireless earbuds and then we had this amazing product and all we needed to know how to do was sell it.

And so this was how most businesses are created is that we had the pain point of having wired earbuds and we wanted to create wireless earbuds.

And so we were solving our own problems. And so that's exactly what we did. We bought, purchased these earbuds and all we needed to do was figure out how to get them in front of people.

And so we used Instagram, which was the only platform we knew at the time, and so on Instagram.

This is back when Instagram was very similar to how TikTok was a few years ago, where videos could literally go viral just on your page and didn't even have to be too good.

And so we would post meme page videos, so basically relatable comedic content that could be relatable to a huge audience.

And then inside the caption of the meme videos, we would put our wireless earbuds and basically like a product placement.

And all we did was that for about four months, scaled up the company to selling out our first bulk purchase of wireless earbuds to $30,000 in revenue.

And then we just scaled up from there with the wireless earbuds where we created new techniques of going viral on Instagram.

We started putting ourselves inside of the videos. We ended up getting posted on platforms like worldstar, some of the biggest meme pages in the world that have like 10 million plus followers.

And we just scaled up really fast. Before I graduated high school, we ended up scaling it to over a million dollars of revenue.

And it's really just because the product was phenomenal. It's not like we had any special tactics. The product was amazing.

People would tell their friends about it. Word spread like wildfire. Had a good fair pricing of wireless earbuds that even though when AirPods and all of these other wireless earbuds came out, we were the one of the lowest on the market.

And so it was good for a period of time. And then we wanted to diversify our product set and go into other products.

And we very quickly realized that, that we just picked an extremely good product because the other products that we diversified into didn't sell nearly as well.

And we ended up getting crushed in the market. We bulk purchased that inventory the same way we bulk purchased the earbuds and it completely miserably failed.

And we ended up getting greedy, taking out a loan to try and get us out of the hole that we were in with all of this additional inventory. And we just kept snowballing downwards from there.

And so it's kind of like any business story, probably any single person listening to this, like if you've had some level of success, you've likely hit a wall, you've likely gone through a major failure that you've had to bounce back from that you' had your back up against the wall. And so that was the place that we were in. Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 08:05

Well, I appreciate you so much in sharing that. So I know you touched on a little bit in what you all are doing now.

Could you take us through a little bit more on like what that looks like and how you're making an impact for the clients you work with?

Luke Lintz 08:14

Our clients were telling us that they wanted more social media followers for more credibility. This is back in 2018-2019 is they were really wanting more followers.

So this was pre Covid and what happened is we got in touch with a giveaway model on social media.

This is where high key clout started, where basically we would partner up with celebrities, a list celebrities on social media. They would give away massive prizes, cars, sometimes $30,000 cash, and then sometimes $25,000 of like luxury bags.

And they would say, these celebrities would say, all you have to do to enter this giveaway on my Instagram is followed and follow everybody that they're following.

So everybody that we're following on high key clout are giveaway sponsors who are helping pay for the giveaway. And then in return they're gaining a ton of followers from these celebrities.

And so it's like a win, win, win situation. The followers of the celebrity is able to win because they have a chance to win these massive prizes.

The celebrity wins because we pay them a massive amount up front. The giveaway sponsors win because they gain a ton of followers.

So it was a great business model and we ended up scaling that up extremely fast where we started doing celebrity campaigns on a weekly basis.

And that's how we were able to partner up with all those A list celebrities like Kevin Hart, Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, Snoop Dogg, Bella Thorne.

And it was a really cool time. We scaled up heavily from that and it's what led to many transitions in the business of transitioning to move to Puerto Rico, transitioning to continue scaling up our social media management side of things with clients, and then we continue to add on more services of digital branding where we started doing press for our clients.

The problem is, is the business was scattered completely. Our focus was in so many different directions. Alex and Leila Hormozi, they're an unbelievable power couple. They run acquisitions.com and they create some amazing content.

One of the things that he said that resonated most with me though, is having a focus on who you're targeting and who you're speaking to with your product.

And I didn't fully conceptualize that until we actually implemented it because what happened was since we were working with so many different industries, it wasn't just affecting the sales team in terms of the amount of leads that came through the door, how hard it was to sell because we had to learn about every single industry.

And so that led to our most recent transition over a year ago of going into the aesthetics, wellness and like just medical space.

And so that's completely who we're focusing on with press and social media. And what has happened over the past year has been unbelievable. On the rewards, the fruits of our labor for taking the risk and narrowing down our niche.

Gresham Harkless 11:08

Yeah, I appreciate you so much in sharing that and I feel like so many. So I almost wonder, what do you feel like is your secret sauce? It could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both.

But it seems like you have this ability where I know it's probably not this simple, but I feel like so many times when you see an opportunity, seem like you go in on that. Do you feel like that's part of like what might be your secret sauce?

Luke Lintz 11:28

Yeah. So that's a point of it. I was going to say my secret sauce is being able to take risks and my appetite for taking risks. It's definitely helped me out in business where I can take massive risks on things like I've lost crazy amounts of money.

And so when you're going into business, no matter what, you're going to lose money. Like there's just no way that you're going to make money over a long period of time without losing a significant amount of money. And so you have to have an appetite for risk.

Gresham Harkless 11:59

Yeah. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or even a habit that you have. But what's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

Luke Lintz 12:10

At the beginning of my business, I committed to myself that if I felt like shit and I didn't want to work for that specific time, I felt demotivated. I felt like I couldn't even stare at my screen anymore.

I would work through that. I wouldn't take a break. I would work through that. Now the problem with this is it got to a point where it affected other areas of my life outside of business where I wasn't able to shut down.

And so I think you get to a point in your career where you start reaching success, you want more balance in your life.

And I think in the entrepreneurial journey, when you're leveling up so hard, it's kind of accustomed that you're not balanced in your life, that you're putting so much effort into your business that you can't be balanced in other areas of your life. So kind of a catch 22 with that one.

Gresham Harkless 13:00

Yeah, absolutely. And what would you consider, you might have already touched on this a little bit more of what I like to call a CEO nugget.

So this could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something you would tell your favorite client or if you have a time machine, you might tell your younger business itself.

Luke Lintz 13:14

People are taking care of those day to day activities with you not being there. And so what does that mean that you're taking care of when you're working on the business, you're working on all of the leadership things in terms of like back-end training.

Maybe to enhance the skill sets of the team or enhance new team members, working on the hiring process, maybe to bring people in on the team better, potentially, potentially working on goals for the company and potentially working on the core values from the company.

All of the higher level skill sets that are building the culture of the team for the long run. And what I've realized, my number one takeaway of getting from in the business to out of the business is first figuring out all the tasks that I had to do.

So every single entrepreneur wears an absolute ton of hats. Every single CEO wears a ton of hats, especially at the start of the business.

And so you're doing like six full time jobs basically. And so I would list out every single task that I'm currently doing and then I would pick the task.

I would write down on each task the dollar per hour approximate of what it would cost to hire out each of those tasks and then I would rank them in ones that I really like doing all the way to the bottom of things that I hate doing.

And then you really just gotta start chipping away at that. And what you do is basically you go into the interview process like it's a learning process. And so that process of hiring out every single aspect of you can take years.

Gresham Harkless 14:46

Yeah, absolutely. So you might have already touched on this, but I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO.

Our goal is to have different, quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Luke, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Luke Lintz 14:58

Being a CEO to me means leading by example. That's truly what it means in every area of life. I think CEOs miss out on this too a lot.

And CEOs have missed out on this in the past that I think that we're trending in a direction of not just all about being cutthroat business and having more balance in our lives and just being like good, well rounded human beings.

And so I hope to be in the future the CEO that people are able to look up to. And I'm able to lead by example to not just in business and in work ethic, but in also all areas of life, health, wealth, fitness, happiness.

Gresham Harkless 15:39

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, Luke, truly appreciate that definition. Of course I appreciate your time even more.

So what I wanted to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course how best people could get a hold of you find about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

Luke Lintz 15:55

I create a lot of social media content on my social media channels like Instagram is Luke Lintz. Most of my channels is Luke Lintz across the social media platform platforms.

Gresham Harkless 16:04

We'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can get a hold of you, connect with you, follow you, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Luke Lintz 16:14

Thank you man. Yeah. Hope everybody got value. Appreciate it.

Outro 16:17

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.

Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five star rating. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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