Episode Transcript
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Luke Lintz (00:00):
Alright, so this is
my first vlog on my personal
(00:04):
YouTube channel. This is veryspecial. Because I've been
wanting to do this for a verylong time, I thought of this
idea that's never been donebefore. And the name of this
channel is going to be road to abillion. I don't think that it
has ever been done beforedocument the entire process on a
(00:25):
week to week basis, goingthrough the goal setting
involved going through themindset, going through the major
decisions being made on anongoing basis of what looks like
to get to where we are now wheremyself is right now, personally,
where myself is right now in thebusiness. And getting to that
billion dollar level. I want tomake this because I've had such
(00:48):
an enjoyable time going back andlooking at videos from the past
that I filmed back when we firststarted seven, eight years ago
with our business, Heike, and Ifound so much enjoyment, going
back and seeing what I was likein certain dynamics, what my
mindset was how I talked how Iinteracted, noticing if I was
(01:11):
stressed in certain areas, Icould only imagine what myself
is going to be like in 10 yearsfrom now 20 years from now 30
years where I'm at looking backon videos, this specific video,
and then the videos that I'mmaking the future and seeing
that. So this channel is reallyjust for documentation for me,
I'm not expecting really anyviewers from it, maybe once I
(01:33):
get to that billion dollarlevel, people might go back and
see what the process is like.
And what's really cool is I'vebeen doing this to a certain
extent where I have thesejournals where their 90 Day
journals I know every singlesuccessful person has some way
of documenting informationdocument goes. But I have this
blue journal where it documents90 Day goals. It gives you three
major 90 Day goals to review.
(01:57):
And then it breaks it down intoweekly goals. And that also
breaks it down into daily goals.
And I filled this outpractically every single day
really religiously for the pastthree years, I have a ton of
information, these thesejournals and I'll probably make
a video down the line goingthrough all three years of
journals because there'll be avideo itself of basically going
(02:18):
back in time through my goalsetting journey of what my goals
were like I even wrote down whatmy mindset was like at certain
points during major stresspoints, I wrote down notes about
how I got through majordecisions. And that's why I
think that this vlog in thisentire channel will do for me
just by myself in terms of, Ithink it'd be cool to have
(02:38):
something every single weekwhere it's not only in the
journal, but things that areinside of my journal that I'm
writing goals that I'm setting,and who knows it might be
valuable to certain people thatare on the same path in the same
industry dealing with the sameproblems. Hopefully it helps
with that. But again, thischannel definitely mainly for me
in terms of just documenting theentire journey and having that
(03:01):
for myself, I'm going to bedoing this every single week. So
plan is right now. It's rightnow it's Monday, November
28 28th, I'll probably be doingthis on Sundays, because I have
the most time then again, I'mgoing to be mainly going through
the blue journal, I will bemaking a video going through the
past three years of bluejournals, I think that would be
very valuable. And it'd be funto go through those past three
(03:22):
years. Like probably cram thatinto one video. And the main
thing with this is I'm justdoing it now because I can
constantly keep pushing thisoff. But the main thing is, is I
blind to do this for so long.
And I wish I did it beforebecause we are at a level with
the business. And I'll get intoit and talk about about the
level that we're currently atjust being completely authentic.
(03:42):
And just being completelyhonest, I'll show screenshots to
if I decide to add this or I'lljust keep it raw, but I wish I
did sooner because we are at aplace of a decent amount of
success in terms of the monetarysense, whatever you quantify
success as but if I'm looking atfrom the monetary sense, we are
decently successful. And so wearen't dealing with problems
(04:03):
that I was dealing with twoyears ago, three years ago, four
years five years ago. And so thereason I'm just starting this
now is because I just wentstarted and I have that goal set
up for a billion but it's noteven really a goal. It's just
the name of the channel. I thinkit's catchy and accurately cool
just to document the path andhaving a sticker point being the
monetary sense in these videos,you're not going to see me
(04:25):
putting on a character I'm notgoing to be like I am in most of
the Heike videos or in some ofour ads where I'm extremely over
the top energetic trying to getin the face. Like it'd be these
videos I'm gonna be myself youknow, smiling, being
enthusiastic, but you know, notnot too over the top and before
I get into things in terms ofthe past week and doing a recap
(04:49):
of basically what I do everysingle week, it would be fitting
to do a background of high keystart off our business in August
2016 first business myself myold a brother and a really good
friend at the time, AaronBadescu. And we started an E
commerce company, justsporadically in terms of we saw
(05:10):
a need for wireless earbudscompletely wireless ear buds, no
core ear buds. And so all we hadto do was go on to the internet,
found a site called Alibaba,which was a wholesale site for
making large purchase orders ofChinese products bulk ordering
them, and you can do what'scalled OEM or ODM design to make
changes to the product, akawhite labeling to put your logo
(05:32):
on the product and make it as ifyou've created the product. And
so we found this one pair ofwireless earbuds it was the only
pair of wireless earbuds thereat the time, we ordered initial
samples, and we thought thatthey were all right, not the
best, but we thought that theywere good enough considering
there was no other alternativeson the marketplace. So we made a
bulk purchase created a logo.
And originally our name was lowkey, just because Loki was a
(05:55):
huge search term in 2016. And itwas one of the top three most
popular search terms in Googlein 2016. And so we decided to
have the hazard name. When wewent to the registration office
to make that into a company.
They said that it's not valid,and we thought about things
you're gonna like, right? We'rehigh key, we're, we're not low
key. And so we switched it,create a logo, which is designed
(06:19):
to have like a key with an arrowup, showcasing like high key and
put that on the earbuds. We juststarted selling via Instagram
marketing, we had no idea whatwe were doing in terms of
marketing, like my older brotherJordan was in business, Aaron
didn't really have any pastbusiness experience. And myself
i i was in high school, we kindof just started posting random
(06:41):
meme page content on Instagramreally just anything that we
liked to get viewers and we grewthat up. And it was crazy. What
just happened is that we wereposting stuff going viral on
Instagram, we were able to findways to creatively market on
Instagram by posting on what wascalled me influencers. So meme
pages and posting our contentthere with just captions talking
(07:04):
about our wireless earbuds. Andwhen it really was that was a
winning product. There was noother alternatives on the
marketplace. And so it was boundto win. We just needed to get
some exposure out there. And wefound a way to get millions of
views for fairly cheap withthese mean influencer pages. We
launched in August 2016. Goingthrough our first Black Friday,
Cyber Monday and holiday season,we ended up selling it was about
(07:26):
$40,000 Canadian in our firstbusiness in that first four
months of launching. So it waswild for us. It felt crazy. We
knew we had something there, westarted thinking of what the
next steps were in terms ofdeveloping the new product. We
create a second version ofwireless earbuds which was
literally just our wholesaleproviders in China created a
second version of wirelessearbuds we tested out they were
(07:48):
better. We put our logo on itmade a few customizations like
we wanted certain colors. Wewanted customized ear tips,
certain things like that theygot it done, bought purchased it
did more marketing, crushed itthe second year, Black Friday,
Cyber Monday crushed it in 2017made I think it was a couple few
$100,000. And then in 2018, westarted getting into different
(08:11):
products because we wanted toconstantly keep expanding and so
we developed charging backpackand then also had a speaker
literally went into so manydifferent areas and diverted
away from our winning product,which was the wireless earbuds
we ended up taking a huge outbecause there were so many other
competitors in the marketplacefor these other products. We
ended up bulk purchasing stuffthat we couldn't sell this
(08:33):
storage were hosting fees thatwe couldn't keep up with
shipping costs crazy had to geta loan. Basically, when in debt,
I remember going to our Shopifystore and we generated over a
million dollars of revenue. Andwe literally went to the
analytics report million dollarsof revenue, we had nothing to
show for it in terms of profitand money in the bank. And so
(08:54):
there was a huge realization interms of it's really just about
the profit has nothing to doabout the revenue. And so you'll
see me throughout thesechannels, mainly talking about
the profit ongoing and nottalking about the revenue
because in reality, the revenuedoesn't really matter if there's
no profit there. It wasn't ahuge slap in the face because I
was just graduating high schoolat the time, he still had plenty
(09:15):
of time to go and what mymindset was back then I remember
it it was such a sick mindset. Ihope anybody who watches this in
the future employs this mindsetwho's young is that
I thought of it. I was like, Oh,my friends are going to college
and they're going to be incollege for for some two, eight
years now just thinking that Icould miserably fail. For the
next four to eight years I couldmiserably fail from all the way
(09:37):
up until I 2628 As long as Iretain some extremely good in
life and work experience that Iwas better off going into the
real world and trying it out andmiserably failing than going
through university and that thatrelieves a lot of stress from me
because when I was going throughbusiness and trying out new
things, taking new risks goinginto new businesses just on the
(09:58):
basis of learning it Parentingas much as possible work as hard
as possible. And that feelingwasn't a bad thing and that it
was inevitable in certain areas.
But what happened is after Heikehacky tech is what we called it
for the wireless ear buds isthat we switched into a
marketing agency called Heikeagency because when we realized
what you're really good at wasInstagram marketing, we were
(10:19):
able to generate a milliondollars in revenue we just
weren't able to retain a profitwe switched into highkey agency
and met our first client justsporadically inside Winnipeg,
our hometown who was a realestate investor had no idea if
we could do the same type ofInstagram marketing for a real
estate investor we ended upworking with him close them on
it was a $4,000 per monthmarketing package I believe,
(10:42):
close them on it and literallyperform super sick guys
Instagram following up on a tonof viewership made a ton of
content for him. We were sohands on you're literally the
ones filming it. I was the onegoing back and you can literally
see if you go onto Heike code onYouTube and scroll down to like
six years ago or five years agoyou can see I'm the one actually
(11:04):
editing the content on AdobePremiere Adobe Photoshop so I
taught all myself that supereasy you just go onto YouTube
and search up like how to editvideos on Adobe Premiere and
sell teach yourself so I wasdoing a in all the videos
filming the content for this guynamed Stephan Arnie. And then we
ended up partnering up with himon Heike agency he had 10 years
(11:26):
experience in real estateinvesting. He referred some
clients over to us. And then wejust start building up high key
agency as a social mediamarketing agency. As we were
building it up, we realized thatall of our clients wanted to
other things besides just socialmedia management, they wanted
social media growth, and theywanted to grow on their
(11:47):
Instagram profile and otherprofiles. And then they also
wanted press and publicationswhich was kind of full circle,
growing their brand not only onsocial media, but also growing
their brand on Google as westarted chugging along with
Heike agency getting somemonthly retainers, some people
falling off, because we didn'thave like a consistent product.
And then some people beingextremely happy with us and
(12:07):
referring over clients. Westarted implementing new
products, which was how wetransitioned into doing press
and start implementing press andreally start growing out that
team but then also doing thehigh key cloak giveaways, which
is probably what we're mostnotable for, in terms of the
Instagram community and a lot ofour content on YouTube. And
that's basically where wepartnered up with celebrities.
(12:30):
So our first campaign wepartnered up with celebrity, and
we were giving away I think itwas $10,000 at the time for
people to follow a list ofaccounts on at Heike floats,
Instagram, a list of accounts onHeike Klout would pay us to
sponsor the campaign. So theypay us we would set up the
entire campaign. And then thecelebrity would be like all you
(12:52):
have to do to enter thiscampaign. To all my followers,
all you have to do is go to addHeike quote and fault everybody
that they're following had endedup turning to be a hit model.
And we scaled that up for thefor the next three years. Up
until now, it ended up beingextremely successful. I think
the total amount generated wasabout 15 million in sales
(13:12):
throughout the course of thethree years with Heike clout.
Now the giveaways havedefinitely slowed down just
because Instagrams engagementoverall has slowed down. So
we've pushed way more intopress. We have a team of foreign
hosts publicist. Now for pressmanagers, we have a team of I
believe it's five editorialpress writers. And then yeah,
(13:34):
some other people along thatteam. But definitely the press
side of things is our core focusand what's likely going to be
what's getting us to thatbillion dollar mark with over
the next 10 years. And so Ithink that's a wrap for this
video. Just want to give thatfull background of where we are
to come from and then in a weekfrom now, I'll probably be
(13:56):
filming the next week recap ofbasically the goals, what the
mindset was, what the plan isfor the following week and all
that but until next week, peace