The Russell Brunson Show - The Podcast Playbook: Hala Taha on Podcast Growth, Monetization & LinkedIn Strategies

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

I had an amazing conversation with Hala Taha, someone who has not only been instrumental in running my podcast but has also completely transformed the way I think about podcasting as a business. We dive deep into her journey from working in radio and starting her own blog to creating the hugely successful Young and Profiting Podcast and founding YAP Media. Hala taught me how to grow, monetize, and structure a podcast, changing my podcast from a fun hobby into a thriving business. If you've ever wanted to take your podcast to the next level or even start one, you’ll want to hear what Hala has to say! During our chat, we also covered how Hala is one of the few people I know successfully using LinkedIn to drive massive traffic and grow a business. By the end of our conversation, I was so impressed that I was ready to hire her and her team to run my LinkedIn strategy. Hear not only how to run and scale a podcast but also how to leverage LinkedIn to increase visibility and connect with your audience in powerful ways. Key Highlights: How to structure a podcast for growth and monetization Strategies for selling ads on podcasts and maximizing your revenue Using LinkedIn as a business tool to grow your network and drive traffic The power of consistency and audience engagement in podcasting Creative ways to recruit volunteers and build a team around your podcast Whether you're just getting started or looking to level up your podcast and LinkedIn game, this episode is packed with insights and actionable strategies! Tune in to discover how Hala has taken my podcast and LinkedIn strategy to new heights! Don't forget to check out this awesome deal from Mint Mobile! https://mintmobile.com/funnels And if you want to enjoy the Marketing Secrets Show ad-free, check out https://marketingsecrets.com/adfree Get 70% off on Welch Equities' retail price at wealthyconsultant.com/secrets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With TD Direct Investing, new and existing clients could get 1% cash back. Great! That's 1% closer to being part of the 1%. Maybe, but definitely 100% closer to getting 1% cash back with TD Direct Investing. Conditions apply. Offer ends January 31, 2025. Visit td.com slash DI offer to learn more. What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the marketing seekers podcast. Super excited to be hanging out with you guys today. I've got a cool episode. We just finished recording with somebody who's actually runs my podcast and does a lot of really cool things behind the scenes. Her name is Hala Taha and she is someone who, as you'll see from this podcast interview, she took our podcast forever. I was doing my podcast

just because it was fun. I like doing it. But she taught me how to actually run this as a business, how to structure our shows, how to sell advertising, how to grow the show and a whole bunch of other things. And then we're going to get deep in this episode. If any of you guys have a podcast or you want to have a podcast, the things you will learn from this will change everything for you. I'm really excited for that. On top of that, she also happens to be of my friends in my network group. One of the only people I know who are successfully using LinkedIn as a traffic strategy as well. In fact, when the podcast ended, I just told her I want to hire her and her team to run

my LinkedIn strategy. So you're going to learn a lot from both sides of this, both how to run and grow a podcast, right? Number two, if you don't want to run a podcast, how do you buy ads on podcasts? That'd be second thing you'll learn. And number three, how to use LinkedIn to grow your company. Um, I really enjoyed this conversation with her. She's someone again, who's working with me to grow my things. And so I also wanted to bring her on the show. Uh, I think you guys will really enjoy this episode. So that said, I'm gonna kick right over and I hope you guys will really enjoy this episode. So with that said, I'm going to kick right over and I hope you guys enjoyed this episode with Hala talking about both podcasting and LinkedIn. In the last decade, I went from being a startup entrepreneur to selling over a billion dollars

in my own products and services online. This show is going to show you how to start, grow, and scale a business online. My name is Russell Brunson and welcome to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. How are you doing today, by the way? I'm doing great. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm excited to have you here as well. And it's interesting because, so I'm gonna tell you guys, I'm gonna tell you real quick a podcast story. So I remember sitting in a hotel room almost 20 years ago and it was this marketing event and they start talking about this thing called podcasting. I remember the first time I heard that word and I was like, that is the weirdest word. This will never catch on. There's no way this will ever be a thing. And I remember thinking it was so dumb. I was like, that's not.

And I'm, I want to, I'm very upset at myself because for 10 years, all my friends started adding podcasts, creating podcasts. I'm like, this is not going to be something that's going to catch on. This is going to die soon. I remember even buying, I bought, um, the idea is like, if I ever do a podcast, I'm going to call it marketing your car. So about marketing your car.com. And finally, after like 10 years, I finally launched a podcast called marketing your car thinking it was going to be a dead platform immediately. It was going to die. And now I'm looking at it as probably one of the number one growth traffic generation strategies that we use inside of our company here at ClickFunnels. Um, and it's just funny. Like I wish I would've spent that first

decade podcasting. So I'd probably have the biggest podcast in the world right now. But now I'm kind of using it now more so as a tool. And so anyway, I'm excited to be talking about this. I'm curious for you, walk us through some of your backstory, how you got into this world. And then we'll talk more about the network and kind of stuff you're doing for me. But curious how you got into podcasting originally. Yeah. So I actually started my career in radio. So when I was a junior in college, I interned at hot 97, which was the number one hip hop and radio, uh, an RMV station. And I was interning on the Angie Martinez show and I wasn't getting paid any money. And I remember I was doing a really good job and Angie was like, hey, like, can you come in every day? Can you just start working here? Basically as an unpaid

intern, but can you come in every day? So I actually dropped out of school and worked at the radio station for a couple years for free. And at that radio station, I started being on on air. You know, they would feature me as like the intern of the afternoon show. I was answering the phone calls, running contests, doing commercials. And I really started to fall in love with broadcasting. And I made money at night selling showcase tickets. And then on the weekends, I would actually have like online radio shows. And at night, online radio shows with other up-and-coming DJs.

So I started doing my own online radio shows, which was basically the precursor of podcasts. Um, how many years ago was this? 10 years ago. Okay. 10 years ago. 10 years ago. Yeah. Or more than 10 years ago. Oh my gosh. What am I even talking about? Like 15 years ago at this point. Uh, so it was a long time ago. It was, it was a while ago a while ago. And I actually went back to school and started a blog next. And it was called the sorority of hip hop. And I was the president of it. And this blog became like very popular within a couple of years. I had 150 girls in this organization who I taught how to blog. I learned how to build websites and things like that. And

we'd also host events and parties and concerts and things like that. We got scouted by MTV and I almost got a show on MTV. They filmed us all summer. But then I didn't get the MTV show. Yeah. So like that was like a big like defeat in my career. And I thought like, OK, I'm never going to be famous. I'm not.

I didn't get on the radio. I didn't get on TV. Let me just be normal and go get a corporate job. So I worked at HP and Disney. And then my last year at HP is when I actually started young and profiting podcasts as a side hustle. So that's kind of the origin story. What made you decide to, to create a podcast? Like, was there a reason like why then and why that podcast? Well, I figured like I was a failed entrepreneur once. Now I was making, you know, over six figures. I was doing really good in corporate and I saw a gap. I saw that there was

nobody talking about podcasts on LinkedIn. And when I started my podcast, this was 2018 and podcast was like already a thing. And actually everybody told me like, you're too late to start a podcast. And I also got told I was too old to start a podcast, which makes no sense. And so I, you know, was leading organizations within HP, this thing called the Young Employee Network. I like, I was an entrepreneur within HP, even though I wasn't an entrepreneur anymore. I was the same holla. I was interviewing the CEO at the town hall and starting groups and organizations and being an entrepreneur at HP. And basically was the face of the young employees.

And that was a 300,000 person company. And I was like the young employee kind of leading everyone. And I just decided like, hey, why am I just leading people at HP? Why don't I just go lead young professionals on LinkedIn and not just reach, you know, 70 or 7,000 people and go reach 7 million people instead. And so that's why I started Young and Profiting. Very cool. I know a lot of people, when they think about starting podcasts, they get scared for so many different reasons. When you started yours, did you have fears? Were you nervous about publishing and putting yourself out there or were you kind of more

comfortable jumping right into it? I was pretty comfortable jumping into it. Like I was very different, I think, from other podcasters because I had online radio shows before. And so I had a lot of the skills in terms of producing and audio editing. And something that I did differently is that I got interns right away. So by episode eight, I had 10 volunteers in a Slack channel and they were basically super bands from LinkedIn that would just be like, Holly, you changed my life.

Your content is so good. Like, how can I help? And I taught like one guy from Estonia how to build my website and one guy from Atlanta how to do my videos. And I had a girl from South Carolina doing my social media and I put them all on a Slack channel. And for two years while I worked a corporate job and built this podcast and started my personal brand on LinkedIn, I literally had 20 people working for free for me who I would just teach how to do everything because I knew how to do everything.

And so I scaled really quickly. And that actually turned into my company now, which is Yap Media. I would say it's so funny how I get some people who come into our world trying to build stuff, do stuff, and then they stop because, like, I don't have the resources. I can't afford to hire the person. I can't do anything. And you had 20 people working for free for you. Do they want to learn the skillset? It was just because they liked you. Like I'm trying to get free employees working for me. That sounds amazing. It was people that just said like, Hey, I want to help. I want to learn from you. How can I help? And, uh, I just had a method of just being like, you know what? You can join my Slack channel.

I'll teach you how to do this. And I'm just, I have a natural talent of recruiting volunteers. Like even right now, I have a charity organization where I have like 20 people working for free for me on this volunteer organization. It's something that I've always been like naturally good at, which is just like motivating people on a mission. And it's actually, in my opinion,

easier to motivate people when there's no money involved. If I'm not getting paid at the time with my podcast, I wasn't getting sponsors. I was just doing it to give back and to help the world. And that was magnetic to people. As soon as I was making money and it was like a company, of course I had to pay everyone. It's a whole different ballgame, you know, but when nobody's making any money, it's just a fun project that people want to do for fun to learn and to bond with each other and do something positive. So cool. I think I agree with you. If you can create a vision where you're like, this is, we're doing what we're creating. We're trying to be, you get people to buy into that. It's such a powerful strategy versus like, I got to hire all these people to help me take this vision out there. I initially coming and bringing

people, uh, selling them on the dream of the vision and, uh, get them all together. So, uh, I think that's really cool. So I want to talk, I have a process I want to take you through on podcasting for those who are listening, like, cause I know everyone here is listening different, different levels, right? Some people have a podcast, some don't yet. Some want to figure out how to use podcasts to drive traffic to their own things, stuff like that. And so I'm gonna walk, I'm gonna walk everyone through kind of a process with questions for you. But the first one I talk about is just, I think for people who are at the very beginning and they don't have a podcast yet,

maybe they're listening to mine or to yours or other people's and they're like, I love this medium, but again, I'm too late to the game. I don't have anything to talk about. Like, how could I, like, what advice do you give someone who's just at the very beginning of this so they have the desire to go and create a podcast? Because I'm a big believer.

I tell everybody, like, you gotta pick a platform to publish on and then be consistent with it. If you do that, it's gonna change your entire life. And I'm a big believer. I tell everybody like you got to pick a platform to publish on and then be consistent with it. If you do that, it's going to change your entire life. And I think podcasting is the easiest and the best platforms people to start on, but we'll be your advice for someone who's just in that phase now of like, is this worth even doing anymore? Did I miss the boat? And then how do I even know what to talk about? Yeah. And let's assume this is a person who doesn't have like a social following or anything like that. Right. If you are a person who is like kind of just starting out, you don't really have a personal brand yet, you want to

start a podcast. The key thing, and Russell said it, is be consistent. I haven't missed a podcast episode in six and a half years. Never missed an episode when somebody was dying, when somebody, you know, when I was going through a breakup, when I'm sick or whatever, I show up, right? I know that this is something that I have to do and I proactively batch episodes and do whatever I have to do to make sure that I never, ever miss a week, right? Number two is that it's not something that's going to be an overnight success. I start, I make a ton of money on my podcast now. I have a podcast network. I get sponsors, right? And it's a really lucrative business when you actually have listeners, but it's a slow growth game, okay? Podcasting is not like a YouTube thing where it could just like go viral, right? Like there's no going viral in

podcasting. It's slowly acquiring your subscribers. But to Russell's point, once they're subscribed, it's like they're attached to your show. They get notifications about your show. They're likely to listen to like 15 episodes, 20 episodes. So it's good and bad, right? So other platforms like YouTube, people are kind of finding you like they're finding something on Google. They're randomly coming across something. One video could go viral with your podcast. You're kind of growing your subscribers over time, but they retain really well.

Okay. So you need to think about for two years, you might not make any money, especially when it comes to sponsorships, right? You can sell your own products and services and you can do that with even a really small audience or you could convert your guests, right? So the first way that I monetize my business

and the reason why I even started a social media and podcast agency is because every guest that would come on my show would be like, Holly, you're crushing on LinkedIn. How did you do this? Holly, I love what you've done with your podcast. I'm seeing you everywhere. How are you getting these great guests? Can you do this for me? And I'd always say like, no, I can't. I'm so sorry. I've got this job at Disney. I have a great job. This is just for fun. I have a volunteer group until one day I was like, okay, I'll do it for you. You know, I'll, I'll start this social media agency. And so you can actually design a podcast where your

guests are your target clients. And that is like such a smart idea because no matter who's listening, you're getting this trust and connection one-on-one with your guests. Right. So the like long story short, I think one of the big things is like if you're looking for sponsors, it's a slow growth game. So you better love doing it and find some value in what you do, whether you're trying to explore and learn something, whether you want to meet new people, meet people who you would otherwise have no opportunity to speak with, like mentors and things like that. If that will fulfill you while you aren't getting the downloads, then you should go for it. If you just want to do it as like a quick money thing, it's not going to work. Yeah. I love that. It's interesting. My podcast journey is very similar to what you just said. Like I told you guys earlier, I started, I bought marketing in your car. I sat on it for a decade and finally, okay, I'm gonna start a podcast. It was actually on the end of my business.

I had a big business that collapsed and I moved my office to about four minutes from my house. And so I thought, okay, I'm gonna do a podcast. I'm gonna do it on my business. I had a big business that collapsed and, uh, and I moved my office to about four minutes from my house. And so I thought, okay, I'm gonna do a podcast. I'm doing my phone. I'm gonna call marketing your car. So I would drive like four minute drive every day of the office. I record this podcast and we didn't know, we didn't have, I don't know, there wasn't no podcast software to show you how many downloads there probably was.

I don't know how to use it. So we just started uploading it. And, um, I think I was probably, I don't know, almost 200 episodes in before we figured out you could see how many people were downloading stuff, and so we hooked it all up, and my brother's like, my brother runs a podcast, like, hey, check it out, and we saw downloads, and what's crazy is, like, the first 100 episodes, I didn't, you know, 150, however many it was, like, I didn't know if anyone was even listening, and I was actually so grateful that I didn't, because if I would have known, like, oh, I got two listens today, like, I probably would have been devastated, probably

would have given up, but I didn't know. Right. And, um, and, uh, and then I remember one of my friends, Steve Larson, he, when he, uh, he got a job with me and he went binge listen to all my episodes. And I remember he told me something. He's like, he's like, man, I was listening to your podcast episodes. He's like, from the very beginning, he's like, you were really, really bad for about 45, 46 episodes until you finally started like finding your voice and started actually getting good. And, uh, and these, about 45, 46 episodes until you finally started like finding your voice and started actually getting good. And, uh, and these, after that, they got really, really good. And I was like, how fascinating if I would have known, first off, nobody was listening initially. And

that was really, really bad. I would have stopped. Right. But because I didn't know, I was just doing it consistently every single day. I was driving, telling these stories and like talking about what I was doing and just kept doing it consistently. It did two things. Number one is it, it gave my audience long enough time to find me and it gave me long enough to actually find my voice. So I had something worthwhile when they did find me. I think that's one of the key things is that initially is not worrying about like how many were listening or not listening, how much money I make, but just, just doing it right for the love of doing it. And then if you do it long enough, then your dream

customers will find you. And then the other weird thing I found out is, um, about that time we launched my inner circle, which was like, at the time it was a 25,000 hour coaching program. Now it's 50,000. But I remember when people started joining, I would ask them like how they found out about it. And almost 100%, it's like 80 some odd, 89, 80, you know, whatever it was, percent of people who, who would join my high ticket program were all podcast listeners. They're like, I listened to you every single day in and out. And it's like, there was just a different level of intimacy from people who are listening to podcasts than any of the other traffic sources we were using. Right. And so for me, I started thinking, okay, I need to spend more time here. Cause if you can get someone to plug in your ear and listen to you

for an hour a day while they're working out, whatever that thing might be, those become your best customers long-term and they're going to buy the things you want and you don't have to be great at selling because you've already built such a solid relationship that everything else becomes easier afterwards. Right? Yeah. Hosts are so trusted, right? To your point, when people are listening to podcasts, they're doing the dishes, they're working out, they're doing something that doesn't require their brain. And so what's happening is that you are in their brain, right? So if somebody is on YouTube or on social media, they're flipping through a million things. You are not their main attention. But in a podcast, usually people are doing something where you are their main attention.

And so that's the real reason why there's so much trust and they feel like you're an old friend. Yeah, I think about the podcasts that I binge listen to all the time. I'm the same way. I feel like I know these people so well. I'm telling stories to my friends about their lives. I'm like, this person doesn't even know who I am, but I feel like I'm like their best friends. I spend so much time with them versus other people. And again, it's like my most intimate time.

When I'm working out, when I'm driving, when I'm like with my thoughts, I'm on a plane. Like that's what I'm doing is I'm listening to those people and they've, I'm undivided attention. So yeah, I'm obsessed with podcasting for that reason. And I think I want everyone to understand that they should be doing that. Okay, the next phase now, and this is something, so again, I ran a podcast for, I don't even know,

10 years before I met you. Uh, we had a mutual friend, Jenna Kuchar, who, um, uh, who you, she's in your network. You were doing a bunch of stuff for, and I had this conversation with Jenna and I don't remember the exact details. I don't want to share her numbers or anything, but, um, she told me like the revenue she was making from her podcast. I was like, Oh yeah. From things you're selling. She's like, no, no. She's like, I sell stuff obviously to my people, but she's like, the revenue is from all the sponsorships. And I remember thinking, I was like, Oh, well I would never do sponsorships. In fact, I remember on a, I should find this on my podcast episodes. I told people like, I would never do sponsorships because if someone else can make

more money for my audience than me, then I don't consider myself a good marketer. Like that was the psychology. And I was like, and who would buy ads on, on the marketing secret on my show? I didn't make any sense to me. And then she explained, she's like, no, she's like the, the brands that are buying from me, she's, she was talking about names, but they're like Geico and these other things. She's like, they're buying, they're buying ad impressions from me. It doesn't compete with anything I'm doing. And, and I make a huge income from that. And I, it kind of blew my mind. I didn't understand it. And then she connected me with you and we started working together, but I would love, and I know right now your network is, you have a huge

waiting list. This is not trying to pitch your network, but just so people understand like the monetization things that are possible when you start doing this, when you start getting a following. So I think hopefully for a lot of you guys, this motivates you to be like, oh my gosh, like this is what I want to double down on because I know that if I'm consistent with this for a year, two years, like this is what's possible with potential sponsorships. Can you explain that side of the business? Totally. So something funny is that similar to you, I didn't have like a moral issue with ads, but when I first started my podcast, I used to be like, you can't make money on podcasts.

Like that's not a thing. And I literally thought that. And now I make all my money getting everybody's sponsorships on podcasts. So something to think about when it comes to getting sponsorships on podcast is that the more downloads you get, the more money per commercial you make and the more commercials that you can have on your podcast, the more money you make. So the goal is to grow your monthly downloads as big as possible. And then to have as many commercials as you can in an episode without making your listeners upset, right? So usually the rule of thumb is about one commercial per 10 minutes.

So I have an hour long show on Yap and I do six ads, right? And I have a certain amount of monthly downloads and the sponsors pay me a CPM, which is a basically a price per thousand downloads. And then that means that if you know how many monthly downloads you have, if you know how long your episodes are and how many ads that you can take, you can literally project how much money your podcast can make. And that's what I do for podcasters. Like when I meet a podcaster for the first time, I'm like, all right, let me look at how long your episodes are, how often are you publishing them, how many monthly downloads do you have? And I can basically just project this is the amount of money you'll make if I sell you out. And it's if you have a real show with organic listeners, there's not many podcasts out there that actually have a lot of downloads. There's about 2000 or like 2500 shows in America, at least, that have a lot of downloads and are making most of the money when it comes to sponsorships.

So the chances of you selling out are super high. So, for example, like Russell is sold out, right? I'm sold out of my show. A lot of, almost my whole network is sold out for the end of the year because there's really not that many podcasts for these sponsors to choose from. So if you did invest in your show and grew it, you would likely get sponsors so long as it's real organic listeners. Yeah. Hey, funnel hackers. I want to talk about building your business. You've got the idea, the passion, the drive, but here's the thing. Setting up the legal stuff can feel like a total roadblock. That's why you need Northwest registered agent. They're like the dream team for business

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I was like, I don't know if I knew this or not. And then you made me a video walking through and it blew my mind. So for me, for those, this is like showing behind the curtain for my listeners. So as you guys know, we've been a longtime podcast listener. I used to do one episode a week and use this like 20 minutes long max, right? And so we looked at it, you're like, well, here's the problem is you can only fit one commercial in there. So like if you shift it from 20 minutes to 60 minutes, now you can have multiple commercials.

And like, instead of going from once a week, if you did twice a week, now it doubles how many commercials are shown. And then it's focusing on like getting more subscribers and more followers to increase how many people download each episode, right? And that was what blew my mind. So, and I'm gonna pull just numbers out of the sky,

maybe just so people can get ideas. So let's just say, let's say someone's getting 100,000 downloads per month and it's a 60 minute show can you walk through kind of basics of what cpms would look like on that yeah totally so it's like for a business show we're looking at a thirty dollar cpm if you're getting a hundred thousand downloads we just divide that by a thousand right if we're doing an hour-long show we times up by six cause we can have six commercials. And then we times up by 30, you're making $18,000 a month in sponsorships on a sold out show. What? 18 grand a month just for talking, just for talking, just for talking. And so I was

saying, then on top of that, you had a hundred thousand people who then in the podcast, if you promote your own products, you still get, you can still promote your own podcast and mark or masterminds and courses and books, right? You still sell your own things. It's just, you're not getting paid to create the content on top of you creating the content, right? Totally. And that's just the ads, right? So at Yap Media, for example, we're monetizing with paid interviews. So people will actually pay to come on your podcast, right? And this can, it doesn't have to be something where you're selling out, right? I had, we both had, I think, did you interview Patrick Lanchoni, right? He's working genius, right? Awesome interview. He's like one of the best management experts in the

world. I would have had him on the show anyway. I did ads for him. We did a paid interview. I got a deal for a lot of my, my network following. I did another paid interview with like somebody who owns a just thrive. And we talked about gut health and it was one of my most popular episodes of 2023. Right. So we do paid interviews. We do custom branded content. You can launch like a 10 minute series within your feed and get 100 percent share voice sponsorship. Gap Media, on average, we're doubling everybody's monthly revenue just with these creative sponsorships, branded content, which is becoming super, super popular, right? And you can make it in a way where your listeners really resonate with what you're saying. And it's in line with what you typically talk about on your podcast. So it feels really natural. There's value for the listener, value for the brand, value for you because you're getting paid for doing what you do. Yeah, so cool. And I think it was crazy. I remember like just some of the ads I've done so far, like, and again, people were listening. You're probably going to hear an ad somewhere

in this video right now and hear me do it. But like we did it for like, for like Mint Mobile, Ryan Reynolds company, Mint Mobile. I was like, this is crazy. They're sponsoring the marketing secret show. And like, um, you know, just it's, it's one of the coolest things in the world. Like you said, and then there's interviews who, again, Patrick was awesome. He, um, you know, just it's, it's one of the coolest things in the world. Like you said, and then there's interviews who, again, Patrick was awesome. He, um, some of you guys may have heard his episode by now, so you probably heard it, but he, um, he's selling a personality assessment, which I'm mildly obsessed with personality assessments as well. And like, we had this great show geeking out about that and he paid to be on the show and

we got paid. Yeah. So it's like, it just, it shifts everything. I remember when I was thinking about this, like one of the big reasons why I made this, this transition to work with you and to do this is I was like, I'm doing these podcasts anyway, right? And right now it's like a nuisance in my life. Like, oh, I gotta do the podcast.

I gotta do the podcast. When I was like, now I'm getting paid to do the podcast. Plus it gives me all the benefits of the podcast that I needed anyway. The reason why I was doing the podcast. Like it doesn't take away from that. Now it gives me a reason like, we need to focus on growing the show

because then we get more impressions, which makes more money. And like, it just it just shifts the dynamic. It turns this thing into, like, a traffic and lead generation machine versus just, like, this thing I was kind of doing on the side to, you know, appease the people who had subscribed to the podcast, right? Just changes the dynamic. Totally. And once you start making more money on your podcast, you can get creative and start to grow your show. And then it's just, like, this flywheel effect of you just investing some of the money you're making on sponsorships to grow your show. More people it's just like this flywheel effect of you just investing some of the money

you're making on sponsorships to grow your show. More people get your message. You're helping more people. You're making more money, right? And that's the game. And if you launch a simulcast eventually, you make so much more money off the bat. The way that people are selling podcasts now

by default is simulcast. So I actually sell my podcast episodes across my audio platforms, my YouTube and my LinkedIn live stream. And I just get like one sponsorship, for example, like Airbnb. And I do one commercial and I flight it across my audio, YouTube and my LinkedIn, and it's sold as like one thing. And that's the default. Like podcasts are no longer just audio only. Podcast is literally whatever you want it to be. And you just tell everybody, okay, my split is 50% audio, 20% YouTube, 30% LinkedIn, and they

buy it as a simulcast. Very cool. So my next question to people who don't have, they're not in a network right now, right? And maybe someday they want to be, is there a way for them to sell ads and do stuff prior to that? Is there building up to the point where someone like you or one of the big networks will be able to take them on? How's the, how's the beginner get into that? Yeah, really great question. When I was first getting ads, I was just doing it independently, right? So you can reach out directly to brands. You can find out who their brand manager is, their partnership manager. You can find people on LinkedIn and a lot of these brands want to work with influencers, but a majority of these brands work through agencies that have a slew of brands. They might have like 20 brands that they manage. They manage all of their money. And some of these agencies

are managing across podcasts, radio, TV, and everything. And some of these agencies are just managing podcast budgets, especially for the brands that really are like leaning into podcast ads, right? So a network primarily works with agencies, right? And these agencies know all the major networks. And in order to qualify for a network, typically you need to have at least 30,000 downloads a month. A lot of networks are actually interested in picking up smaller shows.

They're fine with it. If you have a lot of talent, like, for example, there's sports networks out there that will take pretty small shows. So long as you have your really good talent that they may believe in, or maybe you have a social channel or something that they're interested in and they believe in you, they'll take your show and they'll actually grow it and things like that. But for the most part, I would say the bigger you you are the more interesting you are for a network to sign you on so a good benchmark would be like 30,000 to like really start shopping around and

seeing if anyone would be interested in taking a chance on you and then once you're hitting 80,000 100,000 you'll be eligible for a network so like 20,000 downloads a week an intermediary place to go would be like an advertisedvertiseCast or Gumball. Essentially, that's like a platform online where there's like hundreds of podcasts and you can basically sign up. And if you get, you know, 20,000 downloads a month, which is a threshold for those two, you're getting at least 80,000. You can basically just sign up and then you're an independent podcaster who's getting ads from AdvertiseCast and Gumball. That's kind of how I started, right? And then I started figuring out, hey, there's other agencies

that Gumball is getting sponsorships for. Who are those agencies, right? Where's AdvertiseCast getting all these leads from? And then I figured that out and built my network. So cool. Okay. So then the game is how do we get as many downloads as possible? So what are some of the things you do with your clients or for recommend other people to get the spot? Cause some of us, some people are gonna launch a podcast and have a hundred, a hundred listeners. Like, I don't know how to grow this thing. Like it's not, it's not going viral on YouTube or Tik TOK and it's hoping that one of the episodes lands and crushes it. Right. It's different. How do you, how do you grow a show? How do other people do that right now?

Yeah. So the number one thing to keep in mind is that you want to be where the podcast listeners are, right? So 50% of people, they don't even listen to podcasts. So you're putting your micro content on Instagram and everywhere. And 50% of the people scrolling by are like, I don't even listen to podcasts, right? You want to reach the podcast fans and you want to reach podcast fans who are actually interested in your content in mass, right? And so what does that mean? You need to be visible in the podcast apps. So that means guesting on

podcasts in your niche. That's going to be a really, really great way to get subscribers. So like what me and you did today, we had a podcast swap. I'm sure my listeners are going to go subscribe to you. I'm sure your listeners hopefully are going to go subscribe to Young and Profiting Podcast, right? You can do this at scale. So when I was first growing my podcast, I made my team do like six episodes a week where I would just guess on other shows. Like if you go look at me on Apple Podcasts, I've been guessing on like 500 shows, right? Anybody, big, small, I don't care. John Lee Dumas does the same thing. He takes one day out of the month and he does 20 minute episodes on any podcast that wants

to have him. And he's huge, right? So guesting is huge. You can track it, right? You can track it the same way that you track a commercial, basically using Chartable. And if we really want to get nerdy, you can ask people to implement like this, this prefix basically on their feed. And you can see like how many people went and downloaded my podcast as a result. And some of my most popular episodes that I've been on, like Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, Lori Harder, like all these shows that I've been on, I can see an Apple. It was, it will recommend like podcasters. It will recommend their shows and, and I'll be recommended on their shows because we share subscribers. So not only is it helping because I'm getting those subscribers,

it actually is helping me be featured in Apple on these top shows because we have a lot of shared subscribers. Apple is recommending us. So if you really wanted to take advantage of that, you might guest on the same show that's like in your niche and do like multiple swaps with them. So you guys are always like featured together, right? So it's a very smart strategy. Another thing would be commercials on other podcasts. There's new softwares. Like for example, we just launched an intro cast program with the network where basically it's a feed drops. So it's, it's three minute, a feed drop is essentially like a new episode on your show. But they have this new technology where it's pinned in the second position of the feed.

So it doesn't interfere with your new episode. And it's basically like a three minute trailer where like, for instance, you would be introducing my show, a short intro, then would go into a trailer. And if somebody listens to it, they won't see it anymore.

And so it just helps people gain visibility. And it's one of the best ways to grow shows right now. So Jordan Harbinger's one of the best ways to grow shows right now. So Jordan Harbinger is one of my mentors. He's really known for like being the biggest guru when it comes to growing podcasts. And that's his number one way of growing his show. Now he doesn't invest in anything else except for intro casts. So those are some great strategies. Am I doing intro cast yet? That's my new. Yeah. So I think you're, I think you're signed up. It's not, we'll have to make sure you're, I'm pretty sure you're signed up. I not we'll have to make sure you're i'm pretty sure you sold me i want to do that i'll do a lot of that i know also

like there's different podcast platforms right like most people listen to apple but i i use um i think mine's called over what's mine called overcast overcast that's what i use for mine yeah um because i know i know some of you can buy it can actually buy paid ads in some directly right i know we've done that in the past so How does that work? So, okay, every platform is different, and every platform has advertising opportunities. And so what you want to do is actually just test these platforms. A lot of these platforms are going to offer guarantees. So, for example, CastBox will offer, okay, it's X amount.

We'll guarantee you this amount of subscribers. They typically over-deliver, by the way. And they'll give you like a certain rate. So you can back track that and decide, okay, what is the, based on the subscribers, what's the subscriber cost, right? How many downloads did I get? If you're smart about it, you're going to pay attention to how many retain over time. And then you're going to determine what players make sense to invest in. It's so varied, Russell. Some apps will get you like 50 cent subscribers, dollar subscribers. Some apps are charging $20 a subscriber, right?

And every app has a different way of promoting it. Some of them incorporate you into their onboarding series where somebody signs up for the app. They'll say like, what are your interests? And if they say like marketing, entrepreneurship, they'll then recommend like our shows, for example, for being promoted and they can basically auto subscribe and they get the subscribers that way. Others have like banners within the app where they're promoting your show or having like a featured show section. So it's all different. And really what you've got to do is just test them all and determine which ones are the most bang for your buck. I personally recommend CastBox and Player FM if people want to do those

types of media buys. Very cool. I'm curious if you've seen anybody, and I'll share one idea, one thing I actually did in the past, which I haven't done in eight or nine years, but I'm curious if you've seen more people do this. So I'm obviously a funnel guy. I look at the world through funnel. So I was like, how do I get people from my email list and traffic to come and actually join my podcast? What I did is I went to Hong Kong and we found these little MP3 players. And I took like my first 300 episodes of my podcast and put them on this MP3 player. And I did a free plus shipping MP3 off MP3 player offer where they registered, they paid, you know, seven 95 to ship for the MP3 player. And they keep pages like, hey, thanks. You can subscribe to the podcast here.

And that way I was able to start paying and sending emails to get people. I figured if someone was going to buy a player of me listening to my podcast, they'd probably want to subscribe to the podcast. So that's what we used back in the day to grow our show initially. But I'm curious, have you seen other people do things like that? Like other things? Like more like grassroots? Yeah.

Yeah. Funnel-based stuff, like how I always think. I feel like social media is the way to do that. And one of the things that I do that gets most of my subscribers, my new subscribers, and especially like super high-quality subscribers that buy things that I talk about in terms of my sponsors and things like that is LinkedIn. And so I'll put my full episode, the same episode I put on YouTube that's like fully edited. It's prerecorded. Nothing's live about it, but I'll play it on LinkedIn live. And I do this at the same time each week. And I have people that are watching it. I get like

15,000 views, 20,000 views, and I get lots of comments and engagement. And anybody who likes, shares or comments, we then retarget in the DM And anybody who likes, shares, or comments, we then retarget in the DMs and we say, hey, thank you so much for watching my podcast. Have you subscribed yet? If you want more content like this, this is how you subscribe. Let me know how you like the show.

Usually people will be like, oh my gosh, I always watch you on LinkedIn. I love it so much, blah, blah, blah. Thank you so much. Can you copy and paste that as an Apple podcast review, right? And so we start this little like DM funnel, getting people to subscribe and write reviews. So I would recommend that off the bat. It's like, make sure you have a DM strategy. Make sure you know how to pull up, pull your social media users to your podcast. That's going to get you really high quality

subscribers. And if you think about it, if you hired like a VA, right, a full-time VA who works for you eight hours a day might be like 700, 800 bucks a month. That is way cheaper than doing ads. And you're getting real quality subscribers that have shown interest in your content. They're basically raising their hand saying, I'm interested and you should be DMing them. We go further to like find new people to DM to bring them to our podcast. So for example, on LinkedIn, you can see what events people are registering to. And if you sign up to that event,

you can then DM everybody who registered for that event. So if I go and see like, okay, there's a event on negotiation, I'm going to join. My podcast is not exactly about negotiation, but I've interviewed Chris Voss six times, right? So I'm going to go DM everybody. Hey, like I saw you're signing up for this event. If you want to, I just interviewed Chris Voss about negotiation.

We learned XYZ. I'd love for you to take a listen. And then you drive them to that specific episode, right? So not just the podcast. You can start to target people based on the actual specific topic that they're interested in to really get them to your podcast so there's lots of cool ways that you can kind of pull people from social media that's really really cool that makes me want to buy on my podcast episode i know we've been arguing back and forth on the youtube side of things but like instagram live linkedin live twitter space is like

we don't use those platforms or anything we can stream all of our episodes there and totally and we can get sponsors for that as once we just know the numbers i can sell you as a simulcast and increase your monthly downloads off the bat okay i'm pumped about that i'm gonna figure that out this week and then i'll let you know so anyway in fact some of you guys may be listening to this right now on twitter spaces or whatever the twitter space is that what it's called twitter i tried it the other day for the first time it was awesome is it x maybe it's x space oh yeah it's not twitter anymore x spaces that sounds like a site I should not be visiting. So I don't even know.

But anyway. Okay, this is awesome. This gives me a ton of ideas for myself. I'm just brainstorming out all the thoughts. Because I haven't actively focused on podcast growth for such a long time. And this gives me, it gets me excited. Yeah, anyway. So, hey, funnel hackers, let me paint you a picture.

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and find your next hire faster. Remember, when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all that you need. Hey, funnel hackers, let's be real. How many of you have forgotten about subscriptions and you keep paying for these things month after month after month? That was my wife and I before Rocket Money came along. Literally a couple months ago, we downloaded this app, and within minutes, we found out a whole bunch of subscriptions. In fact, we had multiple Hulu payments, multiple Disney payments from accounts that my wife had set up and I had set up,

and we weren't even using one of them. It was crazy. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you to find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions. It monitors your spending and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Rocket Money showed us where all of our subscriptions were in one place. In fact, it was crazy how many recurring payments we had that we had completely forgotten about. With just a couple of clicks, Rocket Money canceled the ones we didn't need, and the best part is they even monitor unusual spending activity and they alert us if our bills increase. So I'm always in the loop. RocketMoney has over 5 million users, including my wife and I, and has saved a total of over $500 million in canceled subscriptions, saving members up to $740

per year when using all of the app's premium features. In fact, my wife and I, we literally saved over a thousand dollars a month when we started using Rocket app. Now, their dashboard is amazing, and you get a clear view of all your expenses across every account you have. You can even create a personalized budget with custom categories and track your monthly spending trends to stay on top of your goals. You want to save for that dream vacation or pay off some debt? Their new goals feature automatically saves money for you, so you don't even have to

think about it. So cancel all your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney.com slash Russell today. That's rocketmoney.com slash R-U-S-S-E-L-L. That's rocketmoney.com slash Russell. Okay, my next question I want to think through. So some people who are like me, where it's like, I can spend the next couple of years building this up and getting a following, which is great, but how do we get the traffic faster? So we talk about instead's like, I can spend the next couple of years building this up and getting a following, which is great. But how do we get the traffic faster? So we talk about instead of like, I mean, not instead of, you should still also be building your own podcast.

But if you want to go directly and start buying ads in different podcasts, like what does that look like? How does that work as a traffic strategy for people who just want to like jump right in front of, you know, these people that have a hundred thousand or 200,000 downloads a month and get access to their audience very, very quickly. So somebody has a podcast and they want to buy ads on other podcasts? They may not have a podcast. Maybe they have an offer. They have a book they wrote and they're like, how can I go buy ads on these podcasts and just get my ads on the other people's podcasts? So one thing that I would say is like, if you're not going to be

consistent about buying ads on podcasts, I would definitely recommend that you take a different strategy where you guest on other podcasts. Okay. So if you're not going to consistently spend, you know, 20 grand a month on podcasts, cause it's all with, with commercials, it's all about repetition, right? People need to hear something multiple times. They need to build trust. They need to learn about it, get curious about it. Um, whereas if you do a podcast interview and then you layered on with some ads afterwards, that's a good campaign because you're really warming people up. They're hearing your story. They're understanding more about how you help them. And the key is to really understand what your target demo is and to find a podcast

that matches that demo. And so typically what you want to do is find a network. So if you have a business product, you might want to reach out to Yap Media Network. We've got all the business and self-improvement shows, right? If you're targeting the sports shows, you might want to target a sports network. If you're targeting, you know, true crime listeners or women or something, you might want to go to a true crime network, right? So just depending on the demo and you reach out to these networks, they usually have a website. You usually have to put your budget information and they set up a call. So that's what you can do, especially if you're a smaller entrepreneur with a smaller budget, you're going to reach out directly on these network websites based on the demo that you're targeting, right?

So you're going to do research, what kind of networks have these types of shows, and then you can reach out. You can also reach out to podcasters just on their social media and their DMs. They might route you to who their network is if you're unsure, right? So we get like leads from our podcasters all the time in that way. And then if you have a big budget, you're going to want to work with a podcast agency, right? So there's a couple of big ones, Oxford Road, Veritone, AdResults, right? There's all these like specific podcast agencies, but they typically have like minimum budgets. Like you need to spend $100,000 a month or something like this, right? So smaller budgets,

you want to work directly with networks or directly with podcasters. Bigger budgets, you'd want to work with a podcast agency who can do a lot of the legwork for you. Yeah. I've noticed like the ads that you've been selling into our show,

a lot of them are less like direct response right now. Like go get your free offer here. It's more like they all have offers, but it they're they're bigger brands if you've seen people have success like smaller brands who are doing more direct response for like a free book or a free webinar or a free event that they're trying to push through or is it is traditionally is it more of it happening with some of the i guess bigger brands you know yeah great question again that's why i recommend for these smaller brands to do an interview because I do see success with like selling, selling something direct response and trying to get people to actually buy something when there's an interview involved, right?

Podcasts typically are top of funnel. Podcasts are driving awareness. People are getting curious. They're typing online. When people are listening to podcasts, like we were talking about earlier, they're multitasking. They're not clicking, scrolling and buying typically, but they're learning. They're highly engaged. So it's like really great for awareness. If you want to drive clicks and buys, you want to pair your podcast sponsorship with social media posts, with an email blast and so on. So at Yacht Media, for example, we do 360 campaigns where you can buy ads. Plus you can get social, you can get email blasts. And we do like comprehensive campaigns because we know with podcasts, it's mostly awareness. And on social media, people are clicking, buying and scrolling.

And that's where we get most of the conversions. So we'll pair it with social media or email and things like that. Very cool. Yes, I've been thinking through over the last couple months, our strategy. I feel like the best use of us doing podcast ads are to get people from that podcast into our podcast, right? Because then I can take that conversation on someone else's podcast, bring them into ours. Now they're at our house. Now I'm cheering them month after month, long-term relationship with them.

And then from there, it's like, oh, we do have a challenge coming. We have a webinar or whatever those things are, but you get more access to them for free when you're able to pull them to your show. And so I even talked about in the Traffic Secrets book a little bit, like I think the number one thing is using the podcast ads to get people to your podcast. And then from there, now that's traffic you control. Once again, you can have more influence over them at that point. Totally.

And something I'll say is that like these podcast brands, they wouldn't buy and be renewing if it didn't work, right? All I was trying to say is that it takes time, right? The more that you sponsor a show, the more that there starts to be more conversions. And a lot of these brands are actually judging everything based on the lifetime value, right? So when Shopify decides they're going to give me an annual sponsorship, they're looking at the long-term value of the customers that I brought in. And that's what they're judging me on, not just like the monthly conversions. Yeah, so interesting. It's a whole new world.

It's funny because I've been podcasting for a decade and you brought me into this whole new world of podcasting. I didn't understand or look at her. And it's really, really fascinating. I think I was talking to Rachel Hollis and it was interesting because Rachel, she wrote her book, Girl, Wash Your Face. It blew up. She was the second highest sold books.

That year, I think Michelle Obama was the one that outsold her in books. And then she was doing events. She was just traveling the world, doing a million things, stressed out of her mind, all sorts of stuff. And then when she decided to slow down, she looked at all the things she was doing

and she's like, the podcast is the thing I'm spending the least amount of time and makes me the most amount of revenue with the least people and effort. And so she, if you look at her now, she's kind of transitioned

where like her only focus is the podcast. That's her revenue stream. That's everything's happening and she's able to make really good shows and it's just, it's really fascinating. Just, I think the world that podcasting

can open up to people as like, as the business model, as a tool to generate traffic, as a way to make money from spot. Like there's so many things that come off it. If you'll, if you're willing to dedicate and put the time and effort and energy into it, you know, so I think it's pretty cool. I want to transition here away from podcasting, talk about a couple other things, but before we do, I just

want to, I know that on your podcast, you talk a lot about podcasting. You know, I think part of me is like, I want to pitch your agency, but I know your agency's full, but if you want to learn podcasting, one of the best ways is to listen to you talk about this a lot more, right? Where, um, we tell them a little bit more about your podcast, the name of the thing, going, they can find it and actually go subscribe. Yeah. Thank you so much. It's called young and profiting podcast. I interviewed the brightest minds in the world. So I've had people like Alex Ramosi, Gary Vee, Deepak Chopra, Damon John, Seth Godin, the list goes on and on. I feel like I've interviewed like every huge entrepreneur that's out there and I'm really passionate about it. Like I told you guys, I was doing it for free

for many, many years. It's just a love that I have. And I, I'd love to geek out with these entrepreneurs and talk everything marketing sales and entrepreneurship. Yeah, super cool. And if they listen to our episode we recorded recently today, they'll have a chance to hear more about funnels and stories and a whole bunch of other cool stuff. So go subscribe, everybody. Okay, so I know we're probably 75% through the time we have today, but I wanted to, obviously,

most of what I want to spend time with is podcasting, but you have a specialty that I don't have at all. And I've never really talked to people deep about this. I've always in my head, consider LinkedIn as like this platform, this social media platforms over here. And like we push stuff too, but I don't even know how to log in. I remember one time I had a friend at church who, uh, apparently he logged in LinkedIn. He'd messaged me and I didn't respond back to him. And like five years later, I found he was super offended. I was like, I've never even logged in LinkedIn. I logged in and there was like thousands of messages that stressed me out. And so I've never used LinkedIn as an actual, like successfully as a tool for my business. Although I know that there's something

there, I've just been nervous to jump into it. And I know that you are. How do you have 80,000 followers then? I know you're, you're amazing. How do I, I don't even know. I have no idea how it all happened. I know my team pushes some stuff there, but I don't log in. So I want you to sell me on LinkedIn as a tool for my business and hopefully other people as well. So we can understand how to use it. Cause you know, LinkedIn better than probably any of the people in my, in my friend group, uh, you have courses on everything. So I'd love to just understand how you view LinkedIn in the whole grand scheme of things with your business? Russell, I've never paid for an ad. I've never done paid ads.

I've never had, I've had wait lists for my agency. I have a wait list for my podcast network. I have a top 100 podcast. I've never done a paid ad in my life. On any platform? No platform. That's crazy. Well, I've done paid advertising for my podcast on podcast platforms. That's crazy. Well, I've done paid advertising for my podcasts on podcast platforms.

I've never done paid ads like to push my webinars or whatever. I just do LinkedIn DMs. And I have so much success. I have a $10 million business and it's because of LinkedIn. And so LinkedIn really changed my life. I feel like there's a number of reasons why it's an awesome platform. Number one, there's 135 daily, 135 million daily active users, and only 6% of them actually publish original content. So there's like very little competition,

right? So I go on LinkedIn and I'm like doing, I'm like a pretty big self-improvement person, but I compete with like Gary Vee and Alex Hermosi and Damon John. I'm like doing, I'm like a pretty big self-improvement person, but I compete with like Gary Vee and Alex Hermosi and Damon John. I'm not nearly as famous as them. I literally get the same amount of impressions and engagement as those folks on LinkedIn. I'm competing with people way above where I'm at. And it's because there's like low competition, low entry to barrier, like a low barrier of entry right now on LinkedIn. It's hackable, right? You can figure out the algorithm.

If you understand how to post, what not to do, if you have really meaningful content, you'll do really well on LinkedIn. And if you pair that with DM strategies, where you're actually communicating with people and warming them up and bringing them to something of value, offering a lot of free value webinars, cheat sheets, quizzes, whatever it is, and kind of just warming them up, you'll do really good in sales as well on LinkedIn. So it's just a really great way to reach a lot of people. Everybody on LinkedIn has a job. They have money. They're, you know, usually decision makers. They're on LinkedIn to educate themselves, to solve their problems. And so they're just like primed for sales conversations and you won't come

off like super spammy or whatever. If you're actually selling a business problem to them or a solution to a business problem that they have, you don't come off as spammy. That's where they want to get that information. So it's just such an awesome platform for entrepreneurs that I feel like a lot of people are sleeping on. Yeah, interesting. So what is your, so walk me through this strategy because I don't even know how,

like you said I have 80,000 followers. How do you get the followers? Is there a strategy for that? Do you have a team that's consistent? I'm posting this, then we're doing DMs. What does it actually tactically look like inside your business? I'm curious. So yeah, okay.

So I did it all by myself to start with, right? So when I first started, it was just all by myself. But I'll walk you through how I first started, and then I'll walk you through the best practices today. So when I first started on LinkedIn, I just decided I'm going to post every day, right? You don't want to over post on LinkedIn. It's not like Twitter or Instagram where you might want to do a couple posts a day. On LinkedIn, like less is more.

So once a day is all you need because your posts will like cannibalize each other if you post more than that. And then I was thinking, I was trying to figure out how the algorithm worked. So on LinkedIn, what you really want is first connections, right? You can only get 30,000 first connections. And then after that, people just follow you. And these first connections are people you can DM. Okay. And on LinkedIn, you're really looking to find first connections that log onto LinkedIn, interested in what you have to say and take viral action. Okay. So taking

viral action means that they like comment, share and DM, okay? So on LinkedIn, DMing is actually the highest viral action. If you DM somebody and they DM you back, they're 85% more likely to see your content in the feed the next time they log on. So I'm always trying to DM my first connections and get them to DM me back so that they see my content. And I proactively make sure that these people are people who take viral action. They like comment and share, which then makes me go viral. Right.

So when I first started, I didn't really know all of this, but like I had like some sort of an idea and I was like, okay, everybody says I'm the female Gary Vee. Okay. And so I think that anybody who likes Gary Vee is going to like my stuff. We both have a podcast. We're both marketers. We both are motivational, right? Positive. And so I would go and see, okay,

he's my lookalike profile. That's what I call it. He's got an audience that I want. So I go and see who's liking commenting and sharing his posts. Then I invite them to connect. Hey, what's up? My name is Hala.

I noticed that you engage with Gary Vee. I'm a big fan of his work. I'd love to connect with you and provide value on your feed. Okay. Then suddenly I had 10,000 of Gary Vee's followers. I didn't realize that I was tricking the algorithm to a degree because they were DMing me back. Now all these people are seeing my content constantly on their feed. They take viral action. They like that kind of content. And suddenly I became an influencer. I started to go viral. And LinkedIn is kind of like how Facebook was back in the day. When people like comment and share their first connections, get a notification like Jeremy liked Hollis posts or whatever. And so it actually serves content with people who have similar interests based on the keywords in the posts to other people in that engagers following, right? So it spreads when they engage.

So getting people in your network that log on, take viral action, then allows like them to engage when they do do that and notifies other people in their network. And that's how you kind of go viral. So it's kind of how Facebook was like back in the day. It's still organic. It's not like other platforms where there's just very little organic reach, right? LinkedIn's totally different. There's still a lot of organic reach. So you can basically hack the platform, figure out how to do it. And the other benefit I think for entrepreneurs is that it's really easy. So it's not a video first platform. It's all about photographs, quotes, stories, right? And these are way easier to create than like really crazy videos. So like

on Instagram and TikTok, it's a lot of effort. And there's also like a big learning curve when it comes to creating awesome videos. On LinkedIn, you could just have photo shoots and have really good stories, really great meaning and do really well, right? So it's also really easy to do it compared to other platforms. Interesting. So I want to sit back to the first, so you only have 30,000 people that you can first connect. I think if I remember right, you can pay to DM people that are second level, right? Or is that not still a thing? Yeah. So you can pay like LinkedIn Navigator, but that's more like doing like a cold outreach email.

So like when I teach, I usually say like, you don't need that, right? You need to have just a good DM strategy. And what I do for my clients, for example, is that these 30,000 connections are gold, right? Those are the only people we can DM. So like a lot of my clients will have like 30,000 connections are gold, right? Those are the only people we can DM. So like a lot of my clients will have like 30,000 first connections and then they have like hundreds of thousands of followers,

right? And we are constantly removing first connections that like maybe after three messages, they don't respond or we can find out if they haven't logged on in six months and we'll remove them. And then we're always proactively trying to find people based on their titles, based on the companies they work at, based on the keywords in their profile, based on the people they follow or the events they register to. We're constantly trying to bring in new people and refreshing it so that we can keep DMing more people.

Right. So the game is just like removing people who aren't buying from you and putting people who are. And 30,000 is a lot to kind of keep playing that game. So every week we're like removing a thousand people, adding a thousand people, right? And just like keep doing that. That is so cool. I finally, I think I understand the power of what you're doing over there.

Before I was just like, I don't get it. I put things over there. Nothing happens. But it's probably because I've never DMed anybody. I've got no, you know what I mean? I would love to help you with your LinkedIn. You would crush. You're crushing.

You're not even trying and you have a decent following. Well, now I got to beat Gary Vee and Hermosi and everybody else. So now, yeah. Okay. I'm in for that. Let's figure it out. I can help you compete directly with like, very, very soon you'll be getting as much engagement as them. Okay. We'll talk about that as soon as we get off.

Cause I'm up for that. That'd be amazing. So it's so interesting. I know you have, you actually have LinkedIn courses and stuff, right? To help people. So if people want to like learn this process from you, what's the best place they can go to kind of dive into that? It's yapmedia.com slash course. And you'll learn all about it. Very cool. Okay. Well, I am'll learn all about it. Very cool. Okay, well, I am going to commit to you. When we get off this call, I'm going to actually log into LinkedIn, see if I can figure out how to get in there.

I'm going to look at it and see. I don't know if I have any. I probably have some, but I don't know how many connections I even have. I feel blind to this, so I'm going to go do that. I want to encourage everybody else who's listening to this to go and look at LinkedIn because, anyway, every time I go to a new traffic platform, especially the ones I'm most nervous about, and you figure it anyway, every time I go to new traffic platform, especially the ones I'm most nervous about, and we, and you figure it out, it turns on this whole new stream of customers that you weren't getting access to prior, you know, new blood into your world,

new things. And if we can figure out how to do it in a way, we're not spending tons of money. Cause that was always my biggest fear with LinkedIn is like, as we ran paid ads, the ads, the ads were way more expensive there than in other places. And the reason, like you mentioned the quality of the people are better there. And so we just never ran ads because it was so much more expensive. But if I can get similar traffic and results without the paid ad side of things like that, that is a goldmine that I have not touched or haven't looked into at all, which gets me really excited. So yeah, I'm going to learn it. I'm going to master it. Anyway, Hall, this has been really fun. I appreciate you jumping on here and hopefully

inspiring people on two things. Number one is the podcast side, but also the LinkedIn side. Um, you know, my world, as you know, all of our entrepreneurs were obsessed with like creating funnels and then figuring out how to fill those funnels from traffic and from, uh, like the top of funnel building relationships, all that kind of stuff. And I think everything we talked about today are the things that, um, are the, they drive such, um, like they're the, the hinges that, that, that swing big doors. You know what I mean? Like you think about this, it's like in the short term, like, oh, this podcast is not making me any money. But if you're consistent with it for a year, it's like,

now you have this relationship with people. You know, I met somebody, um, last week I was in wise Virginia at a mastermind. This guy flew from the UK, flew all the way there. It's like 26 hours showed up to talk to me for five minutes. He told me, he's like, I've listened to every podcast episode you've ever done. He's like, from listening to podcasts, I've like, you know, he'd made all this money, all sorts of stuff. But it was like, I had never, he's some guy in UK. I'd never met before. I never even knew he existed on this planet. He's listened to every episode from like marketing secrets, episode number one. I started like 15 years or 12, whatever, 12 years ago, all the, every marketing secrets. He's listened to every single one. And like, he came out and he's like, you have no idea how you've impacted and changed my life. And it's like

one of those things where, you know, we're in business to impact lives. And sometimes we look at that from like the sales, the conversion on the funnel and things like that. But it's like, you really dive into these podcasts and do this and build a following. Like you're changing people's lives every single day, whether you know about it or not. And sometime 12 years later, you'll, you'll meet those people. And it's just like, you see what you did and it it's, uh, anyway, it's pretty cool. So I appreciate you jumping on and sharing this stuff for anybody who wants to go deeper with you on podcasts, LinkedIn. Um, I know we talked about a little bit. If you want to push anybody to the last, one last time where they should go. Sure. So if you want to subscribe to the podcast,

it's young and profiting. If you want to find me on LinkedIn, just search for my name. It's Hala Taha, Instagram at Yap with Hala. And if you like to watch your podcast videos, all of my episodes are on YouTube. So cool. Well, thanks for hanging out. Thanks for all you're doing. Obviously you've been helping me and my podcast. Super grateful for you and your team and all you guys do. You're amazing and excited to hang out with you again soon. It's fun meeting you personally in Mexico at the Unlock the Secrets event. And I'm sure we'll hang out again here in the near future as well. So thanks. Thanks, Russell.