Growth Through Publicity (Not Paid Ads) with Adrian Salamunovic @ CanvasPop

About this video

Martell interviews Adrian Salamunovic, co-author of Free PR with Cameron Herold and founder of DNA11 and CanvasPop, about growth through publicity rather than paid ads. Salamunovic says DNA11, which turned DNA samples into art, started at $1,200, sold two, then halved to $600 (average $500-$600) and, by his account, did over a million dollars in revenue in about 14 months with zero funding, forcing the team to learn PR. CanvasPop, spun out of DNA11 to print photos, tested whether the same storytelling could work for an ordinary product. His core argument is to teach rather than sell: pitch media with value for their audience, make even unsexy businesses interesting through founder, culture, or David-and-Goliath underdog angles, and bring PR in-house around a million dollars in revenue rather than relying on agencies. Tactics include finding a lookalike company, searching Google News for journalists who covered it in the last 6-12 months and pitching them, getting into high-intent review roundups, and using HARO, Muck Rack, and JustReachOut. He also describes the PR flywheel, category creation, and lessons on burnout: play the long game and stay laser-focused on one thing instead of chasing side projects like CanvasPop’s PopKey app.

Key takeaways

• Pitch by teaching: lead with knowledge that helps the outlet’s audience, not with how cool your company is or how much you raised.
• Use the lookalike method: find a similar, aspirational company, use Google News to list journalists who covered it in the last 6-12 months, and pitch them your differentiator; he says 100 pitches can yield six or seven stories.
• Target review roundups and listicles (search ’top/best [category]’) because readers have high purchase intent, pages have search authority, and editors update them to stay fresh.
• Bring PR in-house as a mini-agency around roughly $1 million revenue / $100k MRR, and feed low-cost channels daily via HARO scanning, Muck Rack, and podcasts.
• Build the PR flywheel and your own category by naming frameworks and movements, and stay obsessively focused on one problem for the long term rather than diversifying early.

Episode details: published March 11, 2021 · 42:43 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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