Living The Red Life - Young and Profiting with Hala Taha

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Are you ready to bow to the podcast princess and learn all there is to know about growing your business on LinkedIn? Hala Taha is that princess, or as Rudy calls her, the queen of LinkedIn advertising. Whatever you want to call her, Hala is coming in red hot, keeping Rudy on his toes with her razor-sharp business insights as she tricks the LinkedIn algorithm and hacks her way to podcasting and entrepreneurial success. This is Living the Red Life at its finest! There's no messing about: it's all industry hacks and play-by-play strategies on audience growth and sales conversions. Honestly, these business secrets and Personal Branding 101 Tips should be behind a paywall. Roll up your sleeves, grab a pen, and start taking notes. Rudy and Hala aren't slowing down anytime soon – please take the red pill and join them! "I realized there was a gap: you can not only stand out with your content and your visual identity on social media, but you can also stand out with your topic. And I thought: no one else is talking about podcasting. So I was just consistent every day, figured out the algorithm, experimented, and grew a community." - Hala TahaThe first 1000 to click here and send the promo code from the podcast can claim one of my courses for FREE!  - https://m.me/rudymawerlife In This Episode:- How Hala spotted an opportunity on LinkedIn- Appreciating LinkedIn as a smart social media platform- The power of sharing positive messages that people can relate to- How can you strategically use LinkedIn to grow your business?- Why your feed is where you grow, and your DMs is where you sell- Where is there room to grow your brand in the podcasting universe?- What is your creative 'in' to build a flywheel of success?- How to grow your podcast when you don't have money- How Hala embraces consistency and shows up every day- Hala’s advice on taking control of your life- Don’t let the gatekeepers tell you NO!And more!Resources:Hala’s Masterclass - Use the code “RUDY” to get a 35% discount!Connect with Hala Taha:Instagram Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

How do you see social media now as a platform? Because obviously we both have our different platforms that we use and like and love. So how do you see it as a landscape? Yeah, 100%. So when I first started podcasting, what I noticed is that the people who would listen to my podcast, I have a self-improvement business podcast.

I would post something on Instagram and people would only like it if it was fashion related, if it was me like in a cute outfit. You know, it's just a different vibe. People were interested in different things and got entertained in different ways. Then I noticed on LinkedIn, people actually cared about what was in my brain. It wasn't just about what I look like, what I was wearing. And so I thought that, you know, my audience is really here. And I noticed that all the podcasters were really sleeping on LinkedIn. There was only one other person,

Lewis Howes, and he wasn't even doing that great of a job at the time. And so I was like, you know what, there's a real avenue here for me to be the number one podcaster on LinkedIn and that could give me a lot of leverage and it did. My name is Rudy Moore host of Living the Red Life podcast and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life ditch the blue pill take the red pill join me in wonderland and change your life. Guys, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Super pumped for this one. We are going to dive into another ads and marketing masterclass. Hal has joined us today from Yap Media. We've become friends recently online. And as you know, I'm one of the kings

of advertising and we've got a queen here that's going to dive into LinkedIn. So welcome. Thank you for joining us today. I am super excited to be on this show. Thanks for having me, Rudy. Yeah, my pleasure. And obviously we connected recently. Like I explained to you offline, we're always looking for other experts that have figured out a platform, right? And also figured out the personal branding. And obviously you've got a lot going on, but a of my members you know we're mastering Facebook ads I've spent millions of millions and having LinkedIn's like this this secondary platform I'm always asked about and we've never really gone too deep into it so I know hundreds and thousands of my members and fans are going to love today because LinkedIn's like this I

still feel in this early phase even though it's been around a long time. And obviously, you've mastered the podcasting side, the personal brand side, got an amazing story. So maybe we can start there with the story and tell the members and fans and listeners how you got here today and built something so great. Sure. So just to quickly introduce myself in terms of where I am now, they call me the podcast princess. I'm a top female podcaster in the business and entrepreneurship space. I'm also one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn. Right now I'm running a company called Yap Media. We reached over $5 million in less than two years. Then I have 60 employees around the world and I manage most of the LinkedIn influencers.

And I also have a podcast network where I manage five out of the top 20 business shows and several other shows and help them grow and monetize. So that's where I'm at now. Wasn't an overnight success. I started my career in radio at Hot 97, the number one hip hop and R&B station. I actually dropped out of college and took a three year internship, worked for free. Then I started a blog site called The Sorority of Hip Hop, had 150 female bloggers under me almost had a show on MTV got rejected from MTV they pulled the plug last minute and then I went into corporate so I had a corporate stint and I really thought my entertainment career was over and I'd never get back on a mic I worked

at Hewlett Packard then Disney streaming services had a great corporate career and four years into it I decided to start this podcast I thought you know what I have all the skills podcasting is going mainstream I can crack this code I hacked Twitter when I was. I thought, you know what? I have all the skills. Podcasting is going mainstream. I can crack this code. I hacked Twitter when I was younger. I figured out how to hack LinkedIn. And then I hacked podcasting. And here I am today. Good element.

So welcome back to that. I like the, you know, hacked part, right? You like see a channel, see that it's growing, see that it's performing. Then like reverse engineer is success. And that's kind of how I went with Facebook. So where do you see like, obviously, podcast has been great's kind of how I went with Facebook. So where do you see like, obviously, podcast has been great for you. And, and you've grown so much. Where did you see that opportunity with social media? And how do you see social media now as a platform? Because

obviously, we both have our different platforms that we use and like and love. So how do you see it as a landscape? Yeah, 100%. So when I first started podcasting, what I noticed is that the people who would listen to my podcast, I have a self-improvement business podcast. I would post something on Instagram and people would only like it if it was fashion related, if it was me like in a cute outfit. You know, it's just a different vibe. People were interested in different things and got entertained in different ways. Then I noticed on LinkedIn, people actually cared about what was in my brain. It wasn't just about what I look like, what I was wearing. And so I thought that, you know, my audience is really here. And I noticed that all the podcasters were really

sleeping on LinkedIn. There was only one other person, Lewis Howes, and he wasn't even doing that great of a job at the time. And so I was like, you know what, there's a real avenue here for me to be the number one podcaster on LinkedIn. And that could give me a lot of leverage. And it did. It really was the thing that set off my whole career. It wasn't the podcast. I started my LinkedIn journey to blow up the podcast, but it was really LinkedIn that set everything off for me. That's where I blew up first. So essentially, I realized that there was a gap. You can not only stand out with your content and in your visual identity on social media, you can also stand out with your topic. And I thought nobody else is talking about podcasting. And so I was just consistent every day, figured out the algorithm, experimented,

grew a community, you know, figured out the engagement hacks that you need to understand on LinkedIn to win. And people don't understand that LinkedIn is like any other social media platform. Like, of course, people are going there to get a job. But at the end of the day, it's like any other social media platform where their goal is to keep users engaged and entertained on the platform and not take users off. So I just was thinking about ways how can I how can I become a valued content creator on LinkedIn so they reward me and help me go viral while also helping them keep users entertained. So that was really my logic in terms of focusing on LinkedIn. Yeah, I love that. And we, you know, we have hundreds of members we teach marketing to. And I always say, like, figure out a unique selling point.

Go a little nicher when you're starting. And then generally what I teach and I've seen is when you get into your first sort of 5, 10 million, it's good to be niche. And then you're like, OK, now I'm at 10. I want to go to 100 mil. It's like, OK, I got to go a bit broader. Right. So you kind of and you'll live improved. Right? As you just said, that really helped expedite that, right? And then you're kind of like, I don't want to answer for you, but now you've grown, you've got 60 staff and you're doing a lot of amazing things. Do you see now that you're trying

to expand out and go beyond that as you go to, I don't know what your goals are, but you know, going broader and bigger, do you feel that niche in the start worked and now it's going a little more expansive or not? Yeah, 100 percent. So when I first started out, even though my podcast was niche in a sense that I was talking about my podcast, my topics were always broad. And by far, the number one way to go viral on social media is to be as shareable as possible. And there's really only three things that are shareable. It's educational content, motivational content, and interactive content, right? And so if you want to go as viral as possible and grow a community, you want to stay in that motivational, inspirational lane. That's the thing that gets shared the most. That's the most broad, relevant to everyone. And so people think of me on social media as this inspirational mentor. They don't necessarily

think of me as a podcaster because I'm always sharing positive messages that people can relate to. So to basically answer your question is I am going super broad because I know that's what's going to be the most shareable and is going to go the most viral. Great. Yeah. And I think, you know, I want to talk, dive into the podcast side because obviously I've launched mine more recently after many years of thinking about it than actually acquiring a podcast agency as I told you and but one thing I've learned even with all my clients through my agency for the last five years is people that listen to podcasts become the most loyal raving fans because they're spending so much time with you right so an amazing you know vehicle and you've obviously done a great job of that so we'll circle back but I would love to dive into LinkedIn like I said we have hundreds of members that there's an opportunity there especially if they're more B2B or certain niches and

high ticket, et cetera. So can you give us like the 80-20 of LinkedIn? Well, you know, for someone that's maybe thought about using it, how can they strategically use LinkedIn to grow a business? Okay. So first off, there's lots of opportunity on LinkedIn, only five to 6% of people on LinkedIn are actually content creators, right? So huge opportunity, most people on LinkedIn are actually consumers, which is very different from Instagram. And so as soon as you turn on content creator mode on LinkedIn, you're instantly ahead of the game. Because like I said, there's only five to 6% of people were actually creating content. So on LinkedIn, you really want to think about the feed and DMs as two separate things. The feed is really how you go viral, grow a community, get shared, position yourself

as a thought leader, provide value with educational posts, motivational posts. That's how you grow. You don't really want to do too much selling on LinkedIn in the feed because actually LinkedIn's algorithm will deprioritize that. And I'm happy to go through the entire algorithm with you guys today, if you'd like. And then selling is really for the DM. So if you create an educational piece of content, it gets shared. The way that LinkedIn works is when somebody shares your content or even engages on it,

their following actually sees that engagement and you actually attract people who are like minded to that original person who engaged on your posts, which helps grow your network, then anybody who engages likes or comments on your posts, you can then retarget in the DMS and say, Hey, I noticed that you engaged on my post, I would love to provide you you know, this valuable, like more valuable information. And then you can like go on and have some sort of drip campaign in the DM that will ultimately lead to a call or taking them to a lead form, whatever it is. So really, like long story short, feed is to grow. DMs is where you sell on LinkedIn. Yeah. And so and you're saying you can actually take that run ads to the DMs for anyone that

engaged, right? Not ads. You can actually target people on the DM. So so basically looking who's liking and commenting and then direct messaging them with more information. Okay. But that's you outbounding as like a person, you know, yourself. Exactly. Like having like a VA or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I've been waiting for so long for an ad platform to let you run ads in the DMs, right? Like I actually bought a Facebook group of 80,000 people because I do believe at some point they will let you do some sort of retargeting in the DMs and Facebook groups in these communities because they'll run out of

ad space eventually and they'll be like hey we need extended ad space but yeah I see so so we have a lot of coaches consultants agencies so let's talk and dive into that so say I'm a high ticket coach or a consultant or an agency owner. Give us a bit of a step by step on LinkedIn, if you don't mind. I'm like, hey, here's start posting here, then do this, then do this. What would the play be if you were trying to summarize it in a few minutes? Okay. So essentially, one of your biggest priorities on LinkedIn is to proactively bring in a targeted, engaged audience, because that's how you basically play the algorithm. So a lot of people make the mistake, they've been on LinkedIn for seven years.

They've been inviting random people. Some people go on LinkedIn, they get a job, they never come back, and they've got a lot of dead connections. This is one of the biggest problems that I see with entrepreneurs that ask me for my help. They've got lots of dead connections and that's a really big problem

because part of the algorithm when you're first putting out a post is they're gonna feed it to a subset of users. And if you have a lot of dead connections and nobody's engaging, LinkedIn is going to think that your post is not valuable and is not going to warrant future engagements. And so they're going to stop serving that content. And so it's really important, first things first, to clean up your followers, remove dead connections. If they haven't been active in 30 days, you can find that out from LinkedIn Navigator. And you would want to remove them as a connection.

Then you want to find your audience in mass and proactively bring them into your network. And so for example, when I was starting out on LinkedIn, I was thinking that Gary Vee has a following that is just like mine. I'm a marketer, I have a podcast, everybody calls me the female Gary Vee. So I'm going to try to target his engaged users. So anybody who likes and comments on his post is an engaged person on LinkedIn who actively does viral actions on the platform and you want those people in your network. So I would basically invite them. I'd say, hey, what's up? My name's Hala. I noticed you engage on Gary Vee's post. I'd love to invite you to my network, provide more

value on your feed. Nine out of 10 people would accept. All of a sudden, I had 10,000 of Gary Vee's fans. Every time I commented on Gary Vee's post, I'd get 100 likes. More people would see who I am. And little did I know that I was tricking the algorithm. So when you invite somebody to connect and you have a new connection, they're seeing your DMs at the top of their feed for two weeks. When somebody responds and DMs back to you, they're seeing your stuff at the top of their feed for two weeks.

If somebody engages on your stuff, your posts, they're going to start seeing your stuff at the top of the feed. So I was feeding the algorithm unknowingly until I realized what I was doing and I understood the algorithm and why it was working so well. So if you can find your lookalike profiles, this is one of the first things I tell people to do in my masterclass. You've got to see who is actually already has your audience that you want. And then you want to pull those people into your network and they will start to see more of your posts once they are connected with you. So really big hack right there. Yeah, I love that. And when you say just clarify, when you say pull them in, is there a way you can run ads to expedite that or you have to start manually doing connections?

I'm the ad guy. So if I can automate it for a bunch of money at it, I'm like, let's go, you know? Okay. So there's lots of automation tools on LinkedIn, and you have two routes. You can either have a VA. And by the way, guys, all of this is not necessarily within terms of service for LinkedIn. So if you're going to go with the VA route, you're actually not allowed to have anybody post on your behalf on LinkedIn. But everybody's doing it, okay? And so if you're going to go the VA route, you need to make sure you have a VPN that's logging in from, you know, your city. So it doesn't look like there's multiple people in your account.

You need to be pretty careful. And there's different automation tools like Linked Helper and things like that. And basically, you can run automation where you can scrape posts. You can say, OK, here's my lookalike audience, Gary V. You plug in that link. It will scrape everybody who liked and commented. And you can write the boilerplate message, customize it with the first name and send out these automated campaigns. That is like, you know, next level, you know, you like, you know what you're doing. You've got a team, you can implement some rules

and some thresholds so you don't get flagged and things like that. Don't do it if you're, if you don't have the expertise or you're not going to learn about it. I would advise against it. If you're like solo and you you're willing to start slow, do it manually. I did it all manually before I knew you could automate it. Right. And I got really far, almost 100,000 followers doing it manually. Right. So you could just do it manually and, you know, invite people to connect and and just go from there. Love it. OK, great. So that's a bit of a play by play on the growth side. And obviously, you know, we're going to tell people at the end how they can really dive in, right? So what about more on the conversion side, right? So we talked about growth, second part is conversion.

How do we take these people and convert them into, you know, raving fans or customers? Yeah. So if you're looking to generate ROI from LinkedIn and you're targeting a specific person that wants to buy your niche services, you really need to focus on educational content in your feed. And so like I mentioned, the LinkedIn algorithm really doesn't want to promote promotional salesy content. That's why you actually can't link out in your caption to a third party website. You'll get deprioritized. If you use any sort of call to actions that have salesy keywords, you're going to get deprioritized. And so you need to make sure that your feed content is actually pure value, educational,

and sort of indirectly relates to what you want to sell. And we'll give you a clue of who may be interested in what you're selling. So anybody who likes and comments on your post, they're raising their hand. They're saying you have permission to message me and it won't be spammy, right? So you can say, hey, I noticed that you engaged on my post about real estate. I would love to give you some more information about my services. You provide them with some sort of free value. Then you follow up. Let me know what your feedback is and follow up with another message and send them to book

a call to a lead form. So basically what I'm trying to say is that create educational content that's going to pull people in, that's going to help you understand who's actually interested in your content. Then you re-engage them in the DMs and figure out a track for them to actually go have a call or whatever. The higher the ticket, the more likely you actually need to talk to them or have some second conversation. If it's a low ticket, you send them right to your website and try to convert them because hopefully you've made it clear that you're the expert in the space. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Okay, great. Play by play. And we'll circle back at the end on how they can dive deeper into that. Let's talk a little about podcasts because I see they're

both great platforms, right? LinkedIn, I think, is still kind of in a way blue ocean, even though it's been around for a long time compared to Facebook and Insta. What about podcasting, right? Because you obviously, you know you you've got a top podcast please tell everyone about it and i'm excited to be a guest on it too and um i think for you i mean i would love to hear how has that helped you grow the business what's it done for you as a personal brand and how did you grow it to so you know to become one of the best and the biggest yeah so my podcast is called young and profiting it It's a number one entrepreneurship podcast. So I've had Rudy on tomorrow. I've had Grant Cardone, Alex Ramosi, Matthew McConaughey, Seth Godin, Robert Cialdini. Like I've interviewed all the greats on my show. It's such a wonderful platform. And in terms of, you know, how I actually leveraged it to grow my brand, grow my business, my podcast was actually the first way that I monetized anything. So I was a huge LinkedIn influencer, number one podcaster on LinkedIn. It wasn't until I was open to the opportunities that were around me and I was really like over my corporate job, wanted to become an entrepreneur.

And I realized that all the guests that would come on my show, and I had big guests from the start because people just believed in my journey and everything that I had done before that. They would always say, Holly, like, how'd you grow on LinkedIn? Your videos are so awesome. Can you do this for me? Can you podcasts for me can you can you run my social media and i'd always say no and it wasn't until heather monaghan i don't know if you know her she's my first client she basically stalked me for months and was like holla like your team is amazing i had a team of 20 volunteers super fans uh from my podcast that would just volunteer and work for me for two years i I converted them into a team,

started running all of Heather's platforms, blew her up even further, and then just got client after client, billionaires, CEOs, bestselling authors. Really, it's a white glove luxury social media agency for top influencers and celebrities. And it was my podcast and the guests that would come on my show, which is how I first monetize, which is really unusual. Most people monetize first with sponsors and things like that. I saw the way to generate revenue right away was through my guests. And then I used that money to invest and grow my podcast. And basically what happened is it was almost by mistake.

So like I mentioned, I became the number one podcaster on LinkedIn. And so I realized that there was a real problem with Apple and discoverability and all the guys on Apple who were rocking it started 10 years before I did. And I was like, there's no way that I'm going to be able to compete. I'm never getting featured in the Apple app, but there's actually 70 other apps in the ecosystem. And I realized like, I've got a real opportunity with these other apps that want my audience on LinkedIn. And so realized like, I've got a real opportunity with these other apps that want my audience on LinkedIn. And so I reached out to CastBox and Player FM and Podbean and all these other apps. And I said, Hey, I'll promote you on my LinkedIn in exchange for you promoting

me in your app, for you giving me a banner ad, for you sending out an email bus featuring me on your website. And I basically traded my audience until I literally blew up. I went from getting 5000 downloads a month to 100,000 downloads and more. This was like years ago, I get more downloads now. But I'm saying when I first started, I got on the cover of podcast magazine, then I got Matthew McConaughey on the show, and everything sort of just accelerated from that point. And it was because I got creative and had leverage on one platform. Back to what you originally were asking me in terms of like, why did you focus on LinkedIn? Because I knew that if I focused on Instagram, YouTube,

and all these other apps, I would never get any leverage. And the only way to grow anything is to have leverage, at least starting if you don't have a lot of money in one place. And so I got the leverage on LinkedIn and then used that to basically grow, blow up my podcast, blow up my business. Then I had two assets, my podcast and my LinkedIn that I'm now using to blow up my Instagram and my YouTube.

And so like, it's basically getting leverage in little pockets and then moving on to other platforms. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast. It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the tools, the mindset

hacks, the knowledge, and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor, if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far, or any previous episode, or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you hit a five-star review, give us your feedback on the show, the episodes, and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram at RudyMoreLife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of courses for a simple 30-second review. It would mean the world to me send me that screenshot I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome so let's get back into the episode

I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in yeah we I mean I teach this a lot more on the business side as well right like leveraging you leveraging, you know, different, you know, tribes is important. Your following is important. Sometimes it's your offer. So a lot of, you know, the greatest billionaires, they're all about leverage. And it's something that I've used super successfully to get to where I am today. And I love that, you know, we, I think we're similar in the fact of like that creative in, Right. And that's an amazing example of like, hey, this is a creative in to take what I got here, get access here, and then this will compound over here. And then it becomes this flywheel of success.

So I love that. And I teach it all the time. It's awesome. Yeah, exactly. And so, for example, I became the number one podcaster on CastBox, which is the third largest player. And because I became so visible on CastBox and which is the third largest player. And because I became so visible on CastBox and all those people knew who I was, then all of a sudden I started getting

popular on Apple because if for some reason they wanted to listen on Apple, they would go find my show. And it was all because I started on CastBox. So basically you can get to where you want to be, but you kind of can circumvent around, you know, what's going on. So, so what would you say as some like, say, you you know that's a pretty incredible kind of journey and way around about way of getting there right and it's like what would you say if someone was launching a podcast today or has a podcast and it's not going the way maybe they want is there any sort of tip tips or tactics you found or is it really it just boils down to hey you need a big brand you need a big following you need an amazing tribe you need amazing guests like any tips or tricks for people that you found 100

100 so there's really two main ways it's it's you have money or you don't have money ways so we can start with the i don't have money ways right yeah so the i don't have money ways is you need to understand that people who listen to podcasts are in the podcast app. So your number one job is to make sure that you're visible in the podcast apps. It's not about social media ads. It's not about how big your social following is. There are thousands of podcasters out there that have a huge social media following and who have a crappy low ranking podcast that gets no downloads. And it's because they don't understand that people on social media, 50% of people on social media don't even listen to podcasts. And most people will listen to like one or two a month.

You want the rabid podcast fans that are rotating seven podcasts and listening to them every single day. And those people are only found in the apps and they're found in the apps that they're already using. Okay? So you want to think about ways to reach them. So one of the things that you can do

is guess on other podcasts and you can do research on Chartable and you can see who's in your niche. There's many different apps where you can kind of see who is at your caliber in terms of where you're ranking, where it would be an equal swap, and you guys can guess on each other's shows. That's one way to be visible in the apps. You can also run commercials on other podcasts and even trade commercials. So for example, Jordan Harbinger is my mentor. His podcast is about five to ten times bigger than mine. It's what he's been doing it for ten years longer than me.

Right. And so because of that, we do commercial swaps where I'll do eight commercials and he'll do two for me. And we don't pay each other any money and we can track it and see how many people listened and converted. And we just keep doing that until we don't feel like it's meaningful anymore. And so you can basically coordinate swaps, even with podcasters that are bigger than you, you just need to figure out what the impressions should be per podcaster and make sure you guys have equal impressions that you're delivering for the swaps. So those are some ways. Now, if you have money, oh, one other way, if you don't have money, you've got to have a keyword, a very

searchable name. So I've seen a lot of podcasters who are pretty mediocre, nothing special, no social media following and have thousands of downloads. And it's because they've got a great name. So like self-help daily, you know, self-helping is another one that I just met. Investor, millennial investor, right? These podcasters are not doing any ads. They're not spending any money. They're not good at social media. It's just because they have a good keyword that people are searching in the apps. And so for me, it was sort of an uphill battle with young and profiting. That's why I didn't see success right away because nobody was searching young and profiting. I should have called it young entrepreneur, right? If I was, if I had known

better back then. So, so I think it's important to make sure you have keyword in your name. If you're just starting out, you don't have a lot of money. Now, I can make anybody a number one podcaster with investment because it's just like any other game. If you do media buying, you're going to get visibility. So all these apps that I was talking about, CastBox, Player FM, Podbean, Apple's really the only one that doesn't have it. They have a featured placements that you can pay for, you can get banner ads in the apps, and you can just

pay for that and get visibility. And they will guarantee you like, you'll get guaranteed 5000 subscribers, and there's a specific rate or a certain amount of impressions. And you can track which ones are doing well, which ones are retaining your listeners the most, and then basically pour money into that. And so there's lots of different tactics that you can do with all these players to actually grow your visibility within the apps. And then also get commercials on huge podcasts, which basically shortcuts you to the top. Yeah, I love that. So yeah, I'm an ads guy, right? So I actually teach all my members. I'm like, hey, pay to play. If you want to do organic and stuff, great. But I think that takes a lot of time. And I'm like, if you want to do organic and stuff great but i think that takes a lot of time and i'm like

if you have big goals times you know biggest barrier right so say if you can pay 10 20 30k and collapse a year like you can make that decision to me 30 grand to save a year of my life i'm gonna make two million dollars from it next year right so exactly i want to say i want to pay to play you know what do they look, I always teach with Facebook ads, hey, $3,000 a month, $100 a day is a great test budget. And obviously if it's ROI and you can scale, right? So what would you say on this side, like paying to play on the app side, like for $5,000 or $3,000 a month, can they get some good banner ads or do a sponsored show? Or are they talking like $10,000, $20,000? What is a good, you know, a sponsored show? Or are they talking like 10, 20 grand?

What is a good, you know, a decent way, right, to start? Yeah, so most of the podcast players, they range anywhere from like $2,000 to $7,000 for their campaigns. And they won't let you do it more than once a month. So I would say a good test budget would be like $7,000. And maybe you could do like two players that you're focusing on. And again, I would concentrate on leverage. It's much more powerful to be like, I'm the number one podcaster on CastBox

than it is to have like, you know, 500 subscribers on all these random apps, right? So focus on one app that's working for you and keep buying it over and over again. And honestly, the more money that you have and the more investment that you can make, the faster you're going to grow and the more quicker you're going to monetize

because you can only really monetize a podcast once you're getting around 20,000 downloads a week. None of the agencies or like no one's gonna really pay attention to you until you get those sort of downloads. And then, you know, once you're making 20,000, once you're getting 20,000 downloads a week, you can turn around and make 20, 30 grand a month on your podcast.

So you can make a lot of that money back very quickly. So for my clients, I usually recommend, hey, let's invest 40 grand in four months and then I'll start making you 20 grand a month after that. And you can keep going with growing it or not, you know? Yeah. And I mean, look, the 40K, if it's a business owner like me, I probably make 400 grand from the back end, right? From the actual side from the mem the people coming in our ecosystem so it's like youtube i see these guys getting you know 50 grand a month from the paid ads i'm like hey if i had a following like you on youtube i'd be making a million dollars right from from that so i think there's like roi from the ad side but even if you have products and services in line

with your audience there's way bigger roi if you know how to convert them and send them right 100 i was just talking about just from a pure cpm sponsorship you could make your money back but if you add in courses and stuff yep yeah that's crazy so so you would say so you would say a better route just to just to kind of give options is they could obviously the organic we talked about and then sponsoring it. Would you start sponsoring other top shows or would you try and actually pay for the banner placements on these other places where they can actually tune in? Which is if you had a preference over those two or. So I like in-app media buying because a lot of the times you get a guaranteed number of subscribers. If you can monitor the retention and you're good at paying attention to your analytics, you can see which ones are really

working and lean into that. And that way it's more guaranteed. With the podcasters, if you're going to go test, I would test, right? So my recommendation is always to take like five shows. You've got to do at least three commercials because repetition is really important in the podcast world. So don't just do one commercial. Do three to five mid-rolls on those podcasts. You can use a platform like Chartable to track it and see the conversion rates. And then buy more into the podcasts that are actually converting and pay attention to it because at some point it's going to start having declining returns and you'll want to pick a new podcast. But a lot of people, they'll like pour money on just because, you know, it's Tim Ferriss or whatever it is, but maybe it's not a fit for your audience and you don't want to pick a new podcast but a lot of people they'll like pour money on just because you know it's tim ferris or whatever it is but maybe it's not a fit for your audience

and you don't want to waste your money so you could do test budgets and then lean into it whereas the apps is more like you'll get a usually guaranteed number of impressions subscribers and it's more like less risk involved and they can just go to the apps and and obviously get price ranges there and what what like a tim feriss or a top 10 or top 20, are they charging, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars for mid-rolls? Or what are people looking at there if they're trying to go that route? So everything in the podcast world is based on CPM. So it's cost per 1,000 downloads. And usually it's anywhere from $25 to $45, depending on the niche of the show. Business entrepreneurship shows with

like higher caliber listeners are going to cost more than like a Joe Rogan, you know, mass audience show, right? And so it really just depends on the size of the show. You always want to try to shoot for the lowest CPM. So if you can get a show, the bigger the show, actually, also the lower the CPMs because it's just so much volume. So you want to try to get anywhere from, like, I say a $20 to $25 CPM, depending on how big the show is. That would be a really good deal. Yep. Yeah, that's awesome.

And actually, you know, we see Facebook ads, and you're looking at $50 in the business world, $10 to $30 in, like, fitness and broader ranges. So it's actually very similar prices. So it's fascinating to try. And we've had some members do well actually promoting their high ticket services where even when they don't have a podcast, actually sponsoring podcasts that have their avatar. So it's fascinating to see all the different ways you can run ads. Right. For a lot of my members that are just on Facebook right now. Yeah, there's so many other options out there. I feel like podcast ads are so, they're so good at converting because people just love the host and trust the host. And if the host is really careful

about what they advertise and they're really clear about what their audience likes, the trust is there and the conversion is there. Good, love it. So Nick, last part, I just want to know, we've talked about LinkedIn, you're crushing that, you've helped hundreds of people there, thousands of people there, same with podcasts, right?

But how did you become successful, build such a strong brand? Our whole theme is the red life and it's built on taking the red pill, building a life of your dreams, getting out of the norm and society. So talk to us more about the mindset and the decisions and who you are as a person that allowed that to happen

and what you'd say to other people that are trying to make that happen. Yeah, I think the reason why I got so big on LinkedIn and podcasting is because I put in the work. Like I was so consistent. I showed up every single day on LinkedIn. I showed up every single week on my podcast, even when I had no fans. Right. And so people were just so attracted to the mission. Like I said, when I started my podcast, by episode two, I had my first volunteer. He's now my business partner. By episode eight, I had 10 volunteers in a Slack channel.

And for two years, I had 20 people working for free for me. That's how obsessed they were with the mission, right? And so people just really aligned to the fact that I was raw. I documented my journey, my process. I never held back any information. I just was helping people as much as I could. I never asked for a dollar. It was two years into it before I ever sold anything. And I was just all about building community. And so I have a really rabid fan base, especially on LinkedIn and my podcast, because I didn't sell anything to them.

And I really was just all about providing value and actually monetizing wasn't my first goal. It was really about helping people and being a positive voice for my generation. And so I think a lot of people were attracted to that. And then in terms of like personal branding, I always just make sure that I tell it how it is. I talk about my failures. I talk about my ups and downs.

I talk about if I'm having a problem and I'm really open with my community about what's going on in my failures. I talk about my ups and downs. I talk about if I'm having a problem and I'm really open with my community about what's going on in my life. And that makes them feel like I'm an old friend. And like that's personal branding 101. I've got fans in my comments that are like fighting for me as if they've known me for 10 years. If there's like a troll on my LinkedIn post because they feel like they actually know me because I've done such a good job about like consistent messaging and making sure that I have values and really aligned to those values. And I've got a certain tone that I use and I always align to that tone. And it makes people like think that you're an old friend that they know you so well. So really branding is consistency.

And that's what I've really focused on over the years. Yeah, I love that. I think it's a great message, people people because we've talked about the LinkedIn. What are the, you know, everyone wants to learn the hacks, right? And the step by step, which I want to try and provide. And you're saying with a podcast, how do we expedite it? How do we speed it up? But, you know, I've been doing business for 12 plus years, selling online for 20 years,

basically since the start of the internet when I was 11 years old on eBay. And it's like, you can't replace that, right? The hacks and the tips and the tricks speed things up. But the consistency, they're not giving up the being authentic, right? And knowing your voice is like some of the foundations that you have to build on. But most people want to skip. Yeah, exactly. And that's, and that's not how you build something that's word of mouth good, right? That's always my goal. I don't want to do paid ads, right? You're a paid ads person.

I'm the opposite. Everything that I've ever done, pretty much other than media buying in the podcast world, which there's really no other way to really get to the top at this point, I always just stuck with content marketing, word of mouth, organic reach. And that means it's understanding your voice identity, your visual identity, and also understanding the algorithms and how to work with the algorithms like we were just talking about. Then you can start to pull people in and not have to push ads on them to bring them into your community. People will come to you and tell their friends.

And to me, that's like the best way to grow any sort of brand online is for other people to sell you and become your advocate. Yeah, the ads, I mean, for a lot of like the way I see it is it's like that's the that can be the volume. And then off that volume, you'll get a percent that will become your tribe. Right. Long term. And organic is much higher quality. Right. Like, you know, they're going to stay with you longer now. Don't get me wrong. I feel an amazing, massive tribe through paid ads, but it's like the 10% and the 90% is transactional, right? They come in, they buy a product, they learn from it, use it, and move on,

which is fine. That's paid ads. You know, I've always gone a different route because my goal is to be a billionaire, and it's always been very big. I do believe, like, to be a billionaire, if you're building a massive company, that if you look at every billion dollar company, they run major, major ad spend, right?

So I was always like, I want to figure that out and be the king of it because I think like that's the fuel to the fire, right? That's the, you know, it's the gasoline, but you've got to have the foundations, right? And you're amazing at that and obviously done that so so well yeah thank you so much and to your point like paid ads there's going to be a

point in time where i'm going to have to be like rudy i need your help we got to take things to the next level when you get to when would be i don't know where you're at revenue wise but a lot of people they get to 10 5 10 million and then i'm like hey when you want to go to 100 million you can probably still do it organically if you're amazing right and you do have an amazing platform and you can grow fast and you've got an amazing tribe but it's like there's also as you know there's a lot of your tribe that don't see your posts every day right and it's not your fault but it's just like that's the algorithm because the algorithms the billion dollar brands the social platforms know that hey we'll give them 5% reach.

But if they own the other 95%, well, they're going to have to pay us to do that. Right. So there's a point where it's like, hey, it makes sense to actually pay now to reach the other 95% just so I can keep feeding them the amazing content, the products they want to buy, blah, blah, blah. Right. Yeah, 100%. And of course, at some point, I'm going to exhaust everybody on LinkedIn, but I'll have the funds to then go to other platforms and use ads to grow there. Yeah, no, I love it. So we're coming close to time. So I always ask people to finish like, you know, again, we're built on living the red life, building a life of your dreams. What would you say to someone that's like choosing between the blue and the red pill, they want to make the decision to take control of their life, build this dream life, but

they're on the edge or they can't quite do it or they're struggling, they're failing. What would you, what's your words of wisdom and inspiration after all these years building something amazing? So I would say number one, nobody's going to do it for you. You need to take control of your life, right? So one of the biggest things in my my come-up journey that i've faced is gatekeepers telling me no you know i'm a young woman um you know i got rejected by trusty radio satellite radio tv and it wasn't until i was like you know what i'm going to start my own things or

my own podcast that i blew up and really accomplished my dreams because i kept knocking on doors thinking that somebody's gonna you know if i work hard if i work for free, maybe they'll give me a chance. And they didn't because nobody's looking out for you by yourself. And so what I'd say is if a gatekeeper is telling you no, make sure that you think about how you can do it on your own and take the steps to create your own asset and try to go about it and don't take no for an answer. Figure out how you can do it. The other thing that I'll say is that a lot of people are stuck on the outcome like for example for a long time I was like I want to be on hot 97 the radio station when really all I wanted to be was a positive voice for my generation and there was multiple ways to get there so

it's like always think about what is a like who not what you want to be who do you want to be right and think about that and go towards that and there's probably multiple avenues that you can take to reach that ultimate goal rather than being so singular about this is exactly what I want. This is exactly what I want to be. It's more about who you want to be. What do you want to represent? And that's going to always evolve. Right.

And so I would say that will help you broaden up your goals so that you can go out and accomplish your dreams. The last thing I'll say is that you got to believe that life is limitless. You have to believe that anything is possible. If you don't, you're not really going to get, like, extraordinarily successful, in my opinion. And the other thing I'll say is that you have to believe in yourself, right? So you have to believe that you've got the skills and the talents to actually accomplish what you're trying to do. Yeah, I love that.

We have banners all over my famous or favorite saying is, everything's possible when you open your mind. And, you know, my backstory is I grew up with world-class athletes as parents. So I got to see that as a kid and my superpower is believing in it, right? As a kid and growing up that way. And I only realize now how powerful that is because I thought it was normal. But then, you know, you meet most people and they don't so it's like how do you find mentors put yourself in an environment listen to podcasts like this like yours spend time with those people that are going to give you that

belief system right not only give you the the step by step but give you the belief system that you can be more you can do more and that's what Living the Red Life is all about. This podcast is about, your podcast is about, and it's about taking your life to the next level. So thank you so much for coming on. This is awesome and inspiring and super tactical as well in the middle about building everything. So how do they learn more about you? Tell everyone that's going to be geeking out on LinkedIn

about the masterclasses and the courses and the trainings you host that I'm going to attend and be taking notes with the team to implement. So tell us about that just to wrap up. Yeah, sure. So I have a LinkedIn masterclass and you guys, I'll actually create a code called Rudy if you guys want 35% off the class. And so you can go to yapmedia.io slash course. So it's a two day live course with me. It's about 10 hours. And I go through how to create a personal brand of voice identity, a visual identity. It's about 10 hours. And I go through how to create a personal brand, a voice identity, a visual identity.

I talk about copywriting hacks, psychology of design, go through the entire LinkedIn algorithm. That's like three hours of class, engagement hacks. And then you guys can join my mastermind. I put you in my engagement pod. I run most of the influencer engagement pods on LinkedIn. And I really just help you hack the platform. It's gotten like 10 out of 10 ratings. So again, you can go to YapMedia.io slash course and use code Rudy for 35% off, which is going to be our highest discount. The next class is in February,

but we're going to be doing it every month. So it's February 22nd to the 23rd. I also have an agency. So if you're more of like an influencer, you've got a team, you're a CEO. If you're interested in social media or podcast production services, you can go to YapMedia.io. Great. Yeah, I love it. I can't imagine. And of course, listen to the podcast. Yes. Yeah. We've got the podcast going on. I can't imagine 10 hours, right? This was 30 minutes of awesomeness. So 10 hours, next level stuff. I'm excited to send my team and really build it out for us because it's been on our radar for a long time. And I, again, just really appreciate you coming on. I'm excited to be on

yours and give some of that knowledge back to your listener base as well. So my listener base, I know they'll really thrive from this and the strategies plus the mindset is what we're all about over here. So thank you. And thanks for everyone listening in and remember, keep living the red light take care