Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jeremy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jeremy, appreciate you joining us today. One deeply underappreciated facet of being a service provider is the kind of crazy stuff that happens from time to time. It could be anything from a disgruntled client attacking an employee or waking up to find out a celebrity gave you a shoutout on TikTok – the sudden, unexpected hits (both positive and negative) make the profession both exhilarating and exhausting. Can you share one of your craziest stories?

Shortly after leaving the United States Marine Corps, I started a full service digital marketing agency that I ran successfully for over a decade until I was blindsided by a health crisis that nearly killed me and left me on my deathbed for over two years.

During that time, my business that I had poured my blood, sweat, and tears into over the last decade quickly withered away to almost nothing. I was unable to work, as everything in my body was failing and because of that, I faced constant pain at a level of 10/10 pretty much 24/7, was unable to focus, and would often fall asleep for hours at a time due my my exhaustion. And as a result of my inability to work and my added medical costs, we quickly burned through all of our savings just trying to keep me alive.

Now I was forced to go back into business despite still struggling with crippling pain and a wild range of other equally severe symptoms.

How I felt was irrelevant at this point, because I believe I have a responsibility to support my family regardless of the circumstances I’m facing. How I felt; the pain, the exhaustion, the uncertainty, even my own mortality—none of that mattered. I had to push all of that down and continue forward with my mission to ensure my family was taken care of. I’m old school, and just like my job in the Marine Corps, the mission comes before anything else.

But there was another factor that made this even more complicated.

I had been gone from the marketing world for over two years. I had become a ghost with no current clients, case studies, or reviews. I was essentially starting over from scratch, had no more authority or reputation than any rando on Fiverr, and because I was out of money, I had to bootstrap everything while operating at a fraction of my previous capacity.

The odds were stacked against me in a huge way, but as Marines have done for hundreds of years, I kitted up and went to work anyway.

Adapt, improvise, and overcome.

I didn’t have time to sit around and come up with an elaborate strategy, so I jumped into action in a big way.

I knew that I had to first rebuild my reputation, so I started publishing in-depth articles on my own blog and getting people sharing and talking about them, I’m a pretty good writer, and I’m great at building engagement, so this took off pretty quickly. I then leveraged one of these articles to pitch myself as a guest on a prominent podcast in the SEO industry. They loved the topic and got me on in a couple of weeks. That episode ended up being one of their most downloaded episodes, and I then used that to pitch myself as a guest on a few other podcasts. As my reputation began to be reestablished, I then pitched the top publication in the SEO industry for me to write an article for them, which they enthusiastically jumped at. From there, I wrote several more articles for my column at that publication, was interviewed at numerous other podcasts, and landed another column at another top publication in that industry.

I then leveraged all of that publicity to get featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Inc, and more of the top business publications.

In a few months, I went from being a virtual nobody to quickly becoming one of the top names in the SEO industry.

Shortly after that, I realized just how powerful my approach had been, and that if I did it for myself, I could do it for others.

I knew there were a lot of great entrepreneurs out there who, frankly, sucked at promoting themselves because they were so focused on providing tremendous value to their clients. There were also a lot of terrible entrepreneurs who were great at promoting themselves but didn’t really care about providing any real value to their clients.

I wanted to change that dynamic.

So I pivoted arounds 2020 to focus entirely on public relations, in a mission to elevate the great entrepreneurs and drown out the terrible ones. I used my own path as a framework, which I had continued to refine along the way to make faster and more effective.

As a result of this, I quickly became a nationally recognized authority in the public relations industry, serving countless entrepreneurs, as well as prominent organizations like Johns Hopkins University, the Department of Education, and numerous Fortune 500 companies.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I would say that what sets me apart from others who do what I do is that it’s more than a job to me. It’s a personal mission.

I’ve seen the impact it can have firsthand because it’s how I rose from the ashes of my own struggles. That’s something I wanted to provide to the entrepreneurs who truly care about providing real value to their clients. I wanted to elevate them because it helps them to serve more clients, and in doing so, help those clients avoid the entrepreneurs who don’t really care about them.

I am truly proud of the positive impact that creates above and beyond the revenue generated. For example, in our work with the Department of Education, we were helping them to publicize the work they were doing to create a new financial literacy curriculum that would be taught to all Florida K-12 students. We absolutely crushed this campaign, landing hundreds of media features for them, but during a conversation about the program, one of the executives in charge mentioned that she loved how everything was going, but she was concerned that the students wouldn’t understand the importance of the curriculum.

So I said, “That’s an easy fix—let’s get prominent entrepreneurs, sports figures, and celebrities that they already admire to tell them why it’s so important.”

Her response was a simple, “That sounds great, but we don’t know any of those people.”

I told her I did, and I’d handle it for them.

I made a few phone calls and sent a few emails, and quickly got several prominent figures on board to shoot selfie videos telling the students how important this curriculum was and why they needed to pay attention and learn the material.

Mark Cuban was the first. In fact, he sent me his video within fifteen minutes of my request. Kim Kiyosaki was the next, followed by Mark Pellegrino, and shortly after that, we had videos from numerous famous entrepreneurs, sports figures, and musicians. It was an absolute homerun because these videos could now be leveraged by the Department of Education to help the students see the value of learning this curriculum.

There’s no way to quantify the impact of this, but there’s no question that it’s huge. Imagine millions of students coming out of school with a solid understanding of critical financial literacy topics so they make better decisions about money. The positive effects from this will ripple out for generations to come.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I put my mission above everything else.

The reality of being an entrepreneur, just like in the Marine Corps, is that things will rarely go according to plan.

You can do everything right, and still not get the outcome you were expecting. That’s to be expected, but what most people do in those situations is simply throw their hands up and say, “Sorry, it didn’t work.”

I personally refuse to accept that mindset, and instead, will always find a way to deliver the results I’ve promised, regardless of the circumstances.

I’ve had scenarios where we’ve landed killer opportunities that ended up delayed or even canceled due to unforeseen circumstances. For example, breaking news could cause an otherwise perfect story to get pushed back and by the time the editors or producers circle back, that killer opportunity we had already landed is no longer relevant. All of that effort is now essentially wasted.

That’s the nature of this industry, but where most publicists would be content to tell their client, “This one didn’t work out so we’ll see what we can do next month,” I take a different approach. I’ll find somewhere else to publish that same story or I’ll pitch a different angle to the same media outlet.

In other words, I’m going to consistently land them the publicity they need somewhere, come hell or high water.

The fact that I always go above and beyond to deliver the results I’ve promised, no matter what, has helped me to build a solid reputation that sets me apart from other publicists.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

There are several books that I’ve found incredibly valuable in my entrepreneurial journey.

The first one is How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, and this book changed how I think about the relationships in my circle and helped me to create far more impact in everything I do. The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene is another, which took the same topic to an entirely different level.

I also loved Can’t Hurt Me, by David Goggins, because it helped me to reframe what is possible. I’ve always had a superhuman level of both physical and mental toughness, and as a result, I’ve achieved things that many others would consider impossible. But some of the challenges Goggins has overcome forced even me to say, “Wait, you did what?!”.

And The War on Small Business, by my friend, Carol Roth, is another one that I believe every entrepreneur absolutely needs to read. This book spans the political, entrepreneurial, and financial worlds, and paints a picture that most people don’t see—and it’s critical that we do, because if small businesses can’t thrive, the American Dream will cease to exist.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://spartanmedia.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeremyknauffpr/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeremy.l.knauff.2025/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremyknauff
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremyknauff
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWgWjD1pAOPtjmjOjXdjC2Q?sub_confirmation=1