Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - 2022 in Review, What I Learned From Interviewing 50+ People at the Top of Their Game | Human Behavior | YAPSnacks

Starting point is 00:00:01 Yeah, bam. It's the end of the year. And what that means is that we're going to do a recap today because we always do that at Young and Profiting Podcast to end the year off right. As you likely know, at the end of every single show, we always ask the same question to all of our guests. What is your secret to profiting in life?

Starting point is 00:00:32 And at the end of the year, what I like to do is ask my team to gather up all those clips and then I listen to them. And we analyze the responses. and we try to find patterns to see what themes came up as part of the year. And it's a really fun way to recap everything that we've learned. But before we get into the theme of this year that we found, I do want to reminisce on the year that was 2022.

Starting point is 00:00:54 In 2022, it feels like we finally left the house. Many of us return to work or a hybrid version of going to work, and we started doing normal things again, like going to the movies and watching Top Gun Maverick on the big screen. We settled into the new way of work. Some of us new entrepreneurs, some of us quite quitting, which I don't agree with, but that's for another episode. And the majority of us traveled for the first time in a long time.

Starting point is 00:01:20 Some of my favorite memories of this past year were all the trips that I took because I hadn't traveled for so long. COVID is no longer at the forefront of our minds. The mask madness has totally died down, but we're still being reminded of the Omicron variant. And COVID is still certainly a. a decently big part of our lives. And although some things went back to normal, the economy for sure changed. Gas prices skyrocketed and world inflation rose 6.7%, which is twice the average from 2010 to 2020. And in other news, Roe versus Wade was overturned, which was a sad day in our history.

Starting point is 00:01:58 Russia invaded Ukraine. Elon Musk bought Twitter and who could forget when Will Smith slept Chris Rock at the Oscars. Like I mentioned earlier, at the end of your Young and Profiting podcast, we always ask the same question. What is your secret to profiting in life? And it's always so interesting to see how these answers change each year depending on our environment, recent events and the things we all collectively go through. And when I was analyzing the results for 2022, I did notice that a lot of the responses to this question were dancing around the idea of relationships, which is very different for this podcast. And it hit me that so many of my conversations this year really focused on this topic.

Starting point is 00:02:38 And not just in the answer of the last question in the meat of the interviews as well. Relationships kept getting brought up. And the most meaningful conversations that left an impression on me and kept me thinking well after the conversation was over were about this topic of relationships. And so in today's episode,

Starting point is 00:02:57 I'm going to do my best to walk you through all of the key ideas surrounding relationships that we covered on the show this year. So let's begin with the problem and why I think relationships keep getting brought up in the first place. Technology, the pandemic, and socioeconomic conditions are separating us more than ever. People are reporting less friendships. Marriage rates are down.

Starting point is 00:03:18 Love is down. And it's hard to make friends as we're older in general. Participation in real life communities and activities are certainly on a decline. And when I spoke to Scott Galloway, NYU Stern Professor, podcast host, an author of America in 100 charts, he gave me an explanation as to why Americans are more lonely than ever. Once we level the playing field academically, women just blew by men. Women are more mature, they're more disciplined, they're better at delaying gratification. And over the next five years, we're going to have two women graduate from college from every one man.

Starting point is 00:03:53 Now, you think, well, fine, women deserve it. It's their time. There's a lot of knock-on effects here, though. Essentially, women made socioeconomically horizontally and up, men horizontally and down. Or put another way, a woman. woman with a college degree isn't interested in marrying a man without a college degree. Marriage has become a luxury item. If you're a man and you're in the upper quintile, there's a 75% chance you'll get married. If you're in the lowest quintile, it's a 25% chance you're going to get married.

Starting point is 00:04:16 So you have a lot of loneliness on both ends, and you have this mating inequality where if Tinder were a country, it would be like Venezuela. And that is, if you have 50 men and 50 women on Tinder, 42 of the women will show all of their attention to just eight men, leaving 42 men fighting over eight women. because women have a much finer filter around mating. The guys see a picture on Tinder and go, oh, she's cute, swipe right. Women have much finer criteria. And when they can apply it to everybody because everybody is available online,

Starting point is 00:04:46 or at least theoretically, they get a chance to implement their filter. Whereas before we had these geographic mating ring fences, so you went to Temple every Friday. There were eight single women and eight single men, and you kind of all slowly but surely, you know, pair it off and figured it out. Now the top 10% of attractiveness of males engage in what I call Porsche polygamy, and that is they get 80 to 90% of the interest, which doesn't lead to long-term relationships and quite frankly bad behavior.

Starting point is 00:05:12 50 to 90 in terms of attractiveness for men do okay or the same, but the bottom half of men in terms of attractiveness have been totally shut out of the mating market. It makes them angry, detached. They're more likely to be prone to misogynistic content. They think it's a woman's fault. They're more likely to believe in conspiracy theory. They're less likely to believe in climate change. And generally speaking, online dating has just made it a little bit shittier for all women. So what we have is an entire cohort of what I call emotionally and economically unviable men. And so women are leveling up and it's great, but they're not interested in the men our society is producing right now. And the most violent, unstable societies in the world all have too many of the same thing. And that is a broke and lonely young man.

Starting point is 00:05:56 And we are producing too many of them. The thing I would wish for people in their 20s and 30s is that they have more opportunities to establish more relationships. I didn't have a lot of romantic relationships in my 20s. I was very immature. I was very insecure. But I had great relationships at work. I had great friendships.

Starting point is 00:06:13 You should always think, okay, how do I have really wonderful, productive relationships to make little investments every day? And some of that is forcing yourself into uncomfortable spots, initiating conversation with someone in the line at Starbucks, asking someone to coffee out at work, expressing out admiration for someone and trying to establish a friendship. And because we spent so much time alone in the last two and a half years, I'd rather stay home and watch Netflix or young men think I'd rather stay home and play video games or trade on Robin Hood or watch porn. You have to get out of the house every day. You have to force yourself to meet strangers. Go up to a stranger,

Starting point is 00:06:47 join a church group of softball league, a writing group, junior college class, whatever it is, and force yourself to approach strangers to express an interest in conversing with them, an interest in being their friend, and maybe, who knows, even an interest in a romantic relationship. Another reason why humans are more lonely than ever is because of inaction. We let relationships slip away. We get distracted, embarrassed, maybe a little too prideful. To sum it up, we let our relationships die too easy. I recently had four-time best-selling author Daniel Pink on the show, and he explained his four

Starting point is 00:07:27 categories of regret when he came on the podcast. And by far, the number one most common regret we all have has to do with connection. Connection regrets are about relationships and not only romantic relationships and really not even mostly romantic relationships, just the full suite of relationships in our lives. And what happens is that you have a relationship that was intact or should have been intact with a parent, with a sibling, with a relative, with friends, with colleagues. It was intact and it comes apart. Or should have been intact, was intact, and it comes apart.

Starting point is 00:08:04 And I think what's interesting is that, again, if you read story after story, the way a lot of these relationships come apart is not dramatic at all. There's no big fight. There's no screaming or yelling. It's just like this drift that takes place over time. And here's what happens. Somebody wants to reach out. Okay, so let's say, you know, like, man, I was such good friends with Hala 10 years ago.

Starting point is 00:08:28 I haven't talked to her for so long. I should really reach out to her. And then I say, oh, man, no. But if I just reach out to her now, it's going to be so awkward because I haven't talked to her for 10 years. It's going to be so awkward. I don't want to do that. And besides, she won't care.

Starting point is 00:08:43 So I don't do anything. And then two years from now, I say, Oh man, I was such good friends with Holla 12 years ago. I really should reach out to her. But oh my God, it's even more awkward now and she's going to care even less. And so we don't do anything and sometimes it's too late. And that's a big mistake. Let me just double click on that for a moment.

Starting point is 00:09:00 That's a huge mistake. We have piles of evidence showing that when people do reach out, it's way less awkward than they think. Second thing is that we say people, but Holla's not going to care. People almost always welcome it. We're completely wrong on both fronts. We think it's going to be awkward and they're not going to care. And when we do it, it's not awkward and they always care. And Arthur Brooks, who've recently released the bestseller,

Starting point is 00:09:27 How to Crack the Code on Happiness, concurs on the importance of maintaining relationships. He says you should do it while you're young to ensure happiness when you're older. So the key thing to keep in mind is that happiness is love. I've got data over an 85-year period from men and women who were born in the, who are actually in college in the late 1930s and in the 40s.

Starting point is 00:09:49 So they're super old. You know, the sample, it's called the Harvard Study of Adult Development. I don't run it, but a very close friend of mine does. And one of the things that he has found tracking people over, who started with a sample of people who went to Harvard, which is not exactly diverse. But then he expanded to people who didn't go to college and their spouses and their kids.

Starting point is 00:10:07 So it's all races, both genders, poor, rich, educated, uneducated. And what he finds is that there's a lot of things that people do who wind up happy. They have relationships. They all have relationships. They cultivate their critical love relationships. Now, I know a lot of people are trying to get ahead in their career. They're like, you can fall in love and get married later.

Starting point is 00:10:27 But now keep your nose to the grindstone. I got to tell you, that is a huge mistake. Get after it now. Time is of the essence. The secret to profiting in life is a real easy one. You know, the guy who ran that study I talked about, the Harvard study of adult development, he ran it for 30 years.

Starting point is 00:10:45 and he's asked near the end of his career when he's retiring, how do you sum it up? Sum it up in five words. He thought about it. He said, happiness is love, full stop. And that is absolutely true. Love is the secret to your happiness. Love should be the center of your actual ambition.

Starting point is 00:11:02 Look, the happiest people, they're paying attention to their faith, their life philosophy, their family life, their friendships, and serving other people with their work. In other words, their love, their love, and they're more love. The different manifestations of love are to get that done.

Starting point is 00:11:16 That's the source of your prosperity. When I was looking back at all the conversations from this year, there were so many conversations about this topic of not just focusing on your career achievements or monetary achievements and looking at the big picture,

Starting point is 00:11:33 going wider, deeper, trying to have relationships in a more well-rounded life and spending your time in a way that's going to make sure that when you're on your deathbed, when you're old and gray, that you don't have regrets later on. And so the last clip I want to share on this topic is from leadership coach. He's actually the number one leadership coach in the world

Starting point is 00:11:53 and two-time New York Times bestselling author Marshall Goldsmith. So let's talk about this topic of regrets and choosing to live the earned life. How would you define an earned life? Well, an earned life occurs when you really have alignment between three things. One is your aspiration, your higher sense of purpose. The second is you're achieving something meaningful. And the third is your day-to-day actions. When the actions are aligned with those things, that's how I define the earned life. And it's interesting because most humans in the history of the world were lost in the action phase. They just show up. They go from day to day. They're not bad people, but they just do whatever's in front of them, and they kind of just live. Some people are really

Starting point is 00:12:38 lost in aspiration, higher purpose. They don't achieve much, but they can, kind of live in their heads. The people that I work with pretty much, if they're not careful, are lost in achievement. They achieve so much that they're almost achievement junkies. And sometimes if we're not careful, we get so lost in achievement, we forget to ask the question, why am I working 90 hours a week? Or number two, we forget to enjoy the process of life itself, the day-to-day actions of life. So with these people really getting them to focus on, don't become an achievaholic. One of my favorite parts of the book

Starting point is 00:13:14 is the story about the marshmallow research. I love that story. So in the marshmallow research, you take this kids and you give them a marshmallow. So say the kid, well, kid, if you eat the marshmallow, you get one. If you wait, oh, two. Then a kid that waits eats two.

Starting point is 00:13:31 Now, allegedly, they have this research show the kid that eats one marshmallow becomes a drug addict, the ones that eat two, go to Harvard and get PhDs or something. It seems a little overblown. But the point of the research is very clear. Delayed gratification is good. Delayed gratification is good. Almost every self-help book. Delayed gratification is good. Here's how you can work out more. Here's how you can go on a better diet. Delayed gratification is good. Well, here's the problem with the research. They didn't take the kid that ate two marshmallows and said, you know, kid, wait a bit. Three. Oh, don't eat those. Wait a little bit more. Four, five, ten, a thousand. Where do you end up? An old man sitting in a room. waiting to die, surrounded with uneaten marshmallows.

Starting point is 00:14:14 It's so true. Sometimes you have to eat the marshmallows. I feel like this is why the book resonated with me so much because I feel like I'm like one of those overachievers who can't stop achieving. And sometimes it's okay to slow down and think about like what is my ultimate goal here and just be happy with what you have, right? And not always be thinking about what's next, what's next? Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.

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Starting point is 00:17:07 All right, so I think we can all start to see some patterns here. These happiness, leadership, and human behavior experts believe that society as a whole needs to get better at relationships and better at embracing love and connection. And not just all the superficial things in life. It's not just about achievement and work and making money and the hustle and the bustle. Aside from making us feel unhappy when we don't have relationships or lonely, we also need connections to thrive in life, to level up and to become young, improfiting, so to speak. It's a major part of what makes humans human. We learn from each other,

Starting point is 00:17:46 and we get ahead in life by sticking together. Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains this, and while this interview hasn't been released yet, it comes out in a couple weeks. It was recorded in 2022, and I thought this clip would be really insightful to share. The really special thing with humans being live-wired is that we drop into the world half-baked, and we absorb everything around us. That's how you absorb your language, your neighborhood, your culture, your parents, your way of acting, your way of acting in the 21st century and so on. In other words, if you were born with exactly your DNA, 1,000 years ago, you'd be a really different person. If you were born 10,000 years ago, exactly you with the same DNA and you ended up in the world 10,000 years

Starting point is 00:18:28 ago, you'd be totally different in terms of your cultural beliefs, whatever weird, you know, animistic religion you believe in, whatever kind of, you know, thing is appropriate for you know, burning people at the steak or whatever, or how you hunt a lion or stuff like that, you would just be a different kind of person. What separates us from our closest cousins in the animal kingdom is that most animals are still dropping into the world essentially pre-programmed. So if you drop in as a goat or an alligator, you essentially know, okay, here's how I eat, mate, sleep, whatever, and that's it. And you're doing the same thing that goats did 10,000 years ago. But when you drop in as a human, you in your first several years essentially get to learn everything that humans have discovered up until now.

Starting point is 00:19:16 And then you springboard off the top of that. And that's what has led to the success of our species. We've taken over every corner of the planet. We've gotten off the planet. We've invented the internet and quantum computation and so on precisely because we're able. We're not starting from square one every time, but we start from where humans have already gotten. And when I asked David Eagleman what his secret to profiting in life was, later on in the interview, here's what he had to say.

Starting point is 00:19:45 Relationships. It's all about other people. The brain has an extraordinary amount of its circuitry devoted to other people and making models of them and understanding them. And I think one of the key things in life, especially now during our polarized era, is to really try standing in the shoes of other people, especially people that you're disagreeing with, and try to understand the world from their point of view. I decided to share this clip early from David because I think it really showcases how influence we are

Starting point is 00:20:15 by our surroundings and how natural it is to absorb the qualities and opinions of the people around us. This is something that our brain is literally designed to do, to survive. To survive, we have to absorb the qualities and the opinions and the knowledge of the people who raise us, who are around us. And while we don't have a choice when we're children, we have a choice as adults in terms of

Starting point is 00:20:39 who we surround ourselves with. And it's not just about building relationships and filling our circle with whoever is around. It's actually about guarding our circle and proactively bringing the right people into it. Podcast host and entrepreneur Ed Milette gave us his rundown of how he selects his circle. What I try to do when I add new people is I want people that love me, but I actually look for a criteria in people that do they support my values? And so like, I don't like when I, I go to Vegas a couple times a year with a group of men, all of them are amazing husbands. A couple of them are pastors of churches, you know, like that doesn't hurt. But like, I don't want to be around dudes who don't live that part of their life correctly because it might rub off on me. I'm not perfect,

Starting point is 00:21:26 so I want to want to rub off of me. If someone doesn't keep their word or isn't meticulous in telling the truth. We all have that friend. We're like, he is such a bullshitter, right? You have that friend. They're not going to be around me that much. Yeah. I want people that believe in me. And here's the biggie. I have a lot of people. I have a lot of funny friends. You see them on my social media. Like, I have people that really make you laugh. I love people that make me laugh. And I'm an introvert, so I like to be around extroverted people so I can just be a fly on the wall. And so, but a big one is that I want people who don't accept me as I am. And most people are looking for friends who accept them as they are. I'm not looking for that. I'm not looking for acceptance. I'm

Starting point is 00:21:59 looking for people that believe in me so much that they think I could even be better than I am. And they hold me to that standard. If more than 5% of our friends' conversations are about, remember when? Remember? You remember. George Lopez has this great skin on it. What do you do when you get a lot of your friends? Reminis, which is cool a little bit, five percent of the time. But that means you're operating out of that history and memory. Most of my friends, we do a little, I mean very little of the remember, but we do a lot of imagining. We do a lot of dreaming. We do a lot of here's where I'm going, man.

Starting point is 00:22:32 Here's what I'm thinking. Here's what we could do. Let's do this next. We operate in the present, but we talk about the future a lot, not the past. I don't want a lot of friends to talk about the past. I can do that anytime I want. That ain't where I'm at. I really love what Ed Milet is saying here.

Starting point is 00:22:49 You got to make sure that you're with people who dream with you, who think towards the future, who aren't stuck in the past, because the past is unchangeable. We can't do anything about the past. All we can do is take action in the here and now to build a better future. And speaking of building a better future, author and podcast host of Build for Tomorrow,

Starting point is 00:23:11 Jason Pfeiffer, who's also the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, takes it one step further when he says that you should go as far as working with your friends. Relationships matter above all else. It's funny. I could probably have run a different playbook, and I probably could have been a little more cutthroat in the way that I did things in my career, and I probably could have alienated more people

Starting point is 00:23:36 and possibly been making more money now. But to me, that's not profiting. To me, profiting is doing really well and building every part of your life. Chip Gaines, Magnolia Fixer Upper, Chip, Chipping Joanne Gaines. I love Chip, and I were talking once, and he said that, you know, the things. thing that is most important to him is building a network. It's about identifying the people that matter and building something so that they all can thrive and succeed inside of it. And I really love that. And I have found that when I do that, opportunities come. This book that we've been talking about built for tomorrow, you know where it began? Began on a playground with my son's friend's dad, who I was just chit-chatting with as we killed time on a playground. And

Starting point is 00:24:24 And I was telling him about my podcast, and he said he'd check it out. Turns out he's a book agent and a pretty successful one. His name is Matt L. Blanc. And we became really good friends. And we was talking about this book. And then in the very beginning of the pandemic, he calls me. And he says, Jason, we've been talking about doing a book on change for a long time. Everyone is going through massive change right now.

Starting point is 00:24:46 It's time to do it. Now, could I have gone around and been like, oh, you know what? I could be a fancy author. I should find like the biggest shot agent in the world. No, Matt is a great agent. He knows his stuff and he's a friend. And we built a relationship. And that means that he's going to care about me and I care about him.

Starting point is 00:25:02 We're going to do great things together. And that is how I run basically every part of my business. I work with people who I build relationships with. And it has gotten me very far. And this theme of working with your friends didn't just stop there. This year, so many guests mentioned this idea of merging work and home life. Take John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, and what he had to say about the relationships you make at work, and how it doesn't always have to be so black and white when it comes to your work and personal life.

Starting point is 00:25:35 Lead with love. And love is, it's in the closet in corporate America. It's not talked about, and by love, I don't mean romantic love. I mean love in the sense of caring about other people, being compassionate, thoughtful, kind, generous. And it's in the closet primarily because people think love is weak. They think they're at war. The metaphors we use in business are all hyper-competitive metaphors. It's all this competitive, you know, it's we've got to kill our competitors. We've got to, let's roll. There's all these army war metaphors. Let's go to the war room and plot out our grand strategy here. Or they are Darwinian metaphors.

Starting point is 00:26:19 It's survival of the fittest. It's a jungle out there. only the paranoid survive. Or they are hyper-competitive sports metaphors. And in typical sports, there's one winner and everybody else is a loser. So there's an obsession about winning. Winning isn't everything. Winning is the only thing. And so you get obsessed with winning.

Starting point is 00:26:41 You get obsessed in defeating someone else. And these are the metaphors that generally we use to think about, there are other ones too. Now you have a lot of tech metaphors. But the metaphor structure our consciousness, and the way we think about things. And most of the dominant metaphors are hyper-competitive metaphors. And when you're at war, there really is no place for love.

Starting point is 00:27:01 Yeah. Or check all that wimpy love stuff at the door here, because we are going into battle, and I need everybody ready. I don't want any love here. Forget that stuff. And so there's kind of a macho, and there has been traditionally a macho, boys' culture, which it's about winning.

Starting point is 00:27:20 It's about killing the other side. And so love is something you don't have in the workplace. It's something you do outside the workplace. Now, think about how, I want to point out a few things. How inhuman is it or unhuman is it to not be able to bring your whole self to the workplace? Just this narrow part of your being, this competitive part of your being is what's allowed to be in there. And the rest of the stuff you do with your friends, you do that at home with your family. So you're basically dividing yourself in two.

Starting point is 00:27:50 You're leaving the loving self at home and you're bringing the tough guy self to work. But more importantly, even than that, is that love is the glue that holds a company together. It's that unites the teams. It's why customers keep coming back because they feel appreciated. They feel like you care about them. So another theme related to relationships that I came across this year was this idea of community and the power of community. I'll have Brad Stoolberg, author of The Growth Equation, kick it off with the importance of having a feeling of deep community in the human experience. It's hard to go out of it alone.

Starting point is 00:28:34 You know, it's hard to stay on the path. It's hard to have fun. It's hard to be consistent. It's hard to accept where you are. It's hard to be present. It's hard to be vulnerable. So let's make it easier and more fun. And how do you do it? You find people that get it that are walking a similar path is you and you say, hey, let's do this together. So before I get in any of the science, I like to say it like that. Like, it's just more fun. And on our deathbed, no one remembers that they had 100 million podcast downloads or if they won a gold medal. What they remember are the guests that they had in the show, the training partners, the coaches. It's all about the relationships. And this gets back to this broader theme of heroic individualism, like on what time

Starting point is 00:29:15 horizon are you looking? Because the most optimal efficient thing to do in the moment, is very rarely community. I got to call someone. I got to meet them. It's COVID times. I got to think about where we're going to meet. Who's going to wear a mask? This, that, and the other.

Starting point is 00:29:29 It's terribly inefficient. But if you don't make time for that, then come one year or two years, three years, you might find yourself lonely. So if our culture of efficiency and productivity so often crowds out deep community, whereas when you're playing the long game, not only doesn't make it more fun,

Starting point is 00:29:47 but it also supports grounded striving. And I think it's important. There are two ways to build deep community. So one is actual physical in-person connection. The other is a sense of belonging. And that can be to a spiritual tradition, to a religion, to a lineage of intellectual thinkers, to a group of other podcast hosts that you kind of like have a mastermind group and you're all helping trying to share a similar message. And deep community is the combination of both those things. So according to the literature, it's not enough just to have people that you see in person, and it's not enough just to feel like you're a part of something larger.

Starting point is 00:30:25 Both of those things put together, that's what supports mental health and sustainable excellence. Yapam, humans yearn for community and also stand for their community and support their community. So much so that the father of influence, Robert Shaldini, updated and changed his six principles of influence to seven principles of influence recently when he added the category of unity.

Starting point is 00:30:53 So let's talk about unity. This is actually a new principle that you added to your book. So what made you think that you needed to add this principle of unity to your universal principles of influence? It has to do with something I've seen all around us recently, and that is this tendency for us to identify with certain kinds of people who we see as one of us, not just similar to us, but of us. So for example, there was a study done

Starting point is 00:31:27 on a college campus where researchers took a young woman who's about college age and dressed like a student would, asked her to go to a heavily trafficked part of campus and ask for contributions to the United Way in front of a United Way table. And she was getting some contributions. because of similarity. She was the same age and dressed similarly to other students. But if she added one statement before she made a request for a contribution, she increased her donations by 450%. So what was the sentence? The sentence was, I'm a student here too. I'm not just similar to you in age and dress. I'm one of you. And people say yes to those in those individuals. individuals they feel a sense of belonging with to the same social and personal categories. And we see it now

Starting point is 00:32:26 with politics, where people who are in one camp or another are much more favorable and so on to others who are also in that camp. It's true in neighborhoods. It's true in communities. It's true in religious denominations and so on. And for business, purposes, it's true in organizations. If we raise to consciousness that we are members of the same organization, we're pulling together, we have the same goals, people are more likely to say yes to us as a result of just pointing out that we are united in this particular category. Yeah. So in a nutshell, people are inclined to say yes to somebody that they consider one of them. So if we can ever try to figure out what our commonalities are with another person and we call them out, they're more likely to

Starting point is 00:33:21 feel like they relate to us, they understand us, they're one of us, a we relationship, you call it, right? And they're more likely to say yes. And they're categories, though, that define us, not, oh, you like Korean food, I like Korean food. No, not that. It's that it define us. Like ethnicity, age, gender, those kind of things? Right. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. What's up, Yap, gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me, you know your website is one of the first touchpoints every single cold customer has with your brand.

Starting point is 00:33:58 Think about that for a second. When people are searching on Google, everybody who interacts with your brand first is seeing your dot-com initially. But here's a problem. Too many companies treat their website like a formality instead of the gross tool that it should be. At Yap Media, we are guilty of this. I am really due for an upgrade from my website and I'm planning on doing that with

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Starting point is 00:34:42 I love testing and making sure that we've got the best performing assets on the page. You make a change, hit publish, and it's live in seconds. Whether you're launching a new site, testing landing pages, or migrating your full.com, Framer makes going from idea to live site fast and simple. Learn how you can get more out of your dot com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off a Framer pro annual plan. That's 30% off in 2026.

Starting point is 00:35:11 Again, that's Framer.com slash profiting for 30% off Framer.com slash profiting. Rules and restrictions apply. Hello, Yap, gang. I know my young and profiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life, and the New Year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real,

Starting point is 00:35:32 you can't build an empire if your finances are all over the place. That's why getting into it QuickBooks is one of the best first moves you can make this year. They've got powerful money management tools built right into their platform, and they have them for every stage of your business, whether you're a solopreneur or a small business.

Starting point is 00:35:48 And I love that QuickBooks helps you get paid faster, pay bill smarter, and even gives you access to funding when opportunity pops up. So QuickBooks can help you with bookkeeping, can help you with getting paid, can even help you with projections and understanding where your business is at financially. Plus, QuickBooks Money Solutions reduces manual work by half and keeps your money and your books perfectly synced. That means less time staring at spreadsheets and more time actually building the vision that you started with. That's the upgrade that every profiting entrepreneur needs. Start the New Year's strong, take control of your cash flow with QuickBooks Money Tools. Learn more at quickbooks.com slash money.

Starting point is 00:36:25 Again, that's quickbooks.com slash money. Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated, licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Happy New Year, Yab gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh starts. And fresh starts not only feel possible, but also feel encouraged.

Starting point is 00:36:48 And if you've been thinking about starting a business, this is, your sign. There's no better time than right now. 2026 can be the year that you build something that is truly yours, the year where you take control over your career, and it starts with Shopify. I've built plenty of my own businesses on Shopify, including my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. So it's a two-day workshop. People buy their tickets on Shopify. And then my mastermind subscription is also on Shopify. I built my site quickly in just a couple of days, payments were set up super easily, and none of the technical stuff slowed me down like it usually does because Shopify is just so intuitive.

Starting point is 00:37:24 And this choice of using Shopify helped me scale my masterclass to over $500,000 in revenue in our first year. And I'm launching some new podcast courses and can't wait to launch them on Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person, just like the millions of entrepreneurs that they power. You can build your dream story using hundreds of beautiful templates and set up as fast with built-in AI tools that help you write product descriptions and edit photos. Plus, marketing is built in so you can create email and social campaigns easily.

Starting point is 00:37:54 And as you grow, Shopify can scale right along with your business. In 2026, stop waiting and start selling with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.com slash profiting. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting. That's Shopify.com slash profiting. Yeah, fam, hear your first. This new year was Shopify by your side. There was so much talk about love and business this year.

Starting point is 00:38:25 And also a lot of talk about having good emotional intelligence and soft skills to maintain your relationships. So, for example, being giving or curious about people and asking good questions. Next, I want to go over some material from human behavior experts, Michelle Letterman, Bob Berg, and the father of emotional intelligence, Daniel Goldman, on the importance of truly caring and giving to other people. the relationship has, it's like its own entity and how you have an exchange with somebody, how you kind of think about your interactions with somebody, it kind of has a life of its own. And so when we talk about the relationship having a life of its own, if you come into it with this mindset of giving to give first, to give often, because you want to, not without

Starting point is 00:39:12 expectation of something in return, or should say not with expectation of something in return, I will tell you, the original title of that chapter was Law of Reciprocity. And it just wasn't sitting right because when I talk about that content, I'm not talking about give to get. I'm not talking about quid pro quo. It really is that mindset of how do I add value to you? How do I show you that I hear you, that I'm focused on you, that I'm curious about you, that I care about you, that I want to support you, that I want to help you. And when you feel that from me, You want to bring it back, but it's not because, right? It's not like I have to.

Starting point is 00:39:51 It's I want to. And sometimes, and oftentimes, when we think about giving, we can give in one direction, but we receive from another. And so that mindset of giving, it has to be always there for relationships to have foundation to grow on. Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people's interests first, which isn't to say in any way, that you should be anyone's doormat or a martyr or self-sacrificial. It's just that when you look at the all things being equal, the no like and trust, what do we see? That placing that other person's interests first, okay,

Starting point is 00:40:28 that is the way to develop that no like and trust toward you in others. And that's how referrals will happen because you're developing, you're creating these great relationships with people. The way you begin doing it is from that very first conversation to make it not about you, but about them. It's asking them questions about themselves and their business, not in a prospecty type of way, just in a way that creates a relationship. It's asking them how they got started in their business and what they enjoy most about it.

Starting point is 00:41:00 It's asking that person what I call the one key question that will distinguish you from the rest, which is, how can I know if someone I'm speaking with is a good customer for you? which totally reframes everything from being the typical, I'm out there trying to give my elevator speech and sell you my product or service the first time I meet you to, I want to know how to help you, I want to know how to serve you, I want to know how to bring value to you.

Starting point is 00:41:28 There's a different kind of intelligence than IQ that matters enormously for how well you do in life. That's emotional intelligence, how you handle yourself, how you handle your relationships. It makes all the difference. So if you look at engineers, for example, this is new data, and you ask engineers to rate each other and how effective they are as engineers, it turns out there's zero correlation to their IQ

Starting point is 00:41:55 and very high correlation to their emotional intelligence. The person you work for, the boss you love, is someone with emotional intelligence. The employee that you want is someone with emotional intelligence. They manage themselves well. their eye on their goals. They're positive. No matter what happens, they recover from stress. They empathize. They tune in to other people. They get along with other people. They're great on teams. You know, this is the kind of person you want in your organization. And by the way, it's the kind of person you want in your spouse. Being emotionally intelligent enough to maintain

Starting point is 00:42:35 your relationships and increase your soft skills to be more likable and have deeper connections is just such a valuable skill to have. It is such an undervalued skill because after all, everything that we want in life, career-wise or personal-wise, can be completely accelerated by other people. Think about it. Money comes from other people.

Starting point is 00:42:55 You don't sell to things. You sell to people. Jobs come from other people. Getting promoted comes from other people. Even if you're an entrepreneur and you think you've done it all on your own, building a company requires other people, whether it's your clients or your employees.

Starting point is 00:43:09 you name it. You need people to get ahead in life. You need a network to compound your success. Television star Josh Peck agrees when he told us his secret to profiting in life. Doing nice things for other people, becoming indispensable, helping people. I mean, it has an immediate payoff because of just the carmic sort of payout, which is immediate, right? You feel better. It's the best way to get out of self. But if you do these things, what you'll find is when people are in a position then to spread goodwill, to pay it forward, when they have an opportunity, you're going to be at top of mind. Like people go out and they become super selfish and they're like, no, I have to wrestle money and prestige and goodness in the world. I got to go out

Starting point is 00:43:56 and get mine. And it's like, well, good luck, because no one's going to think of you first for anything. But if you've got a great track record of being there for people, of being a reliable, good source of good work, then the moment they have an opportunity to spread that goodwill, they're going to think of you first. And to wrap up this episode, I think a clip from social entrepreneur Mark Batterson best sums up a lot of the things we spoke about today. The secret, I think, to profiting in life is to, it's not about you. It's just, it's not about me.

Starting point is 00:44:34 It's about other people. When I add value to other people's lives, that's where I find joy. that's where I find meaning. And it's kind of like happiness. If you seek it, you aren't going to find it. Happiness is a byproduct of something else. I think meaning is the same way. Like you, and here's where I would challenge listeners.

Starting point is 00:44:53 Have you ever defined success for yourself? Not adopting a cultural definition, not adopting your great-uncle's definition. No, you. What is success for you? And so for me personally, success is when those who know me best respect me most, and that's my wife and my kids. You know, it's not about how many books I sell, how many people I pastor. It really is about, am I, am I better in

Starting point is 00:45:18 private than I am in public? And if not, am I at least the same person? I want to be famous in my own home. So you really have to define success for yourself and figure out otherwise you fall into what what Stephen Covey famously said, so many people are so busy climbing the ladder of success that they fail to realize that it's leaning against the wrong wall. Thank you for listening to this episode of Young Improfiting podcast. Young Improfiters, as you go into 2023, let's remember that one of the most important things we can do

Starting point is 00:45:55 is invest in our relationships now. When we're old and gray, we're not going to remember how much money we made. We're not going to remember all the trophies we got and accolades we got, we're going to remember our friends, our families, our memories. And if we aren't careful,

Starting point is 00:46:12 life may pass us by and we wouldn't have ever really lived a full life. And so I hope when you're planning your New Year's resolutions, you're also incorporating something about relationships because so many smart, successful experts who came on the show this year really stressed the importance and see that our society is sort of going backwards

Starting point is 00:46:33 in this regards. So let's proactively focus on relationships. Let's give it our best effort. And let's grow and thrive in this new year. I'm so excited for the year ahead. And I'm super thankful for all my listeners. I've got so many amazing listeners. There's hundreds of thousands of you guys who listen to this show each and every week.

Starting point is 00:46:53 And I just appreciate it so much. I appreciate that you chose Young and Profiting podcast as your podcast of choice. I appreciate you guys sharing this with your friends and family, spreading the word, putting it on your social media. You guys have been such great fans this year. My reviews have skyrocketed. You guys just really have gone above and beyond to support the show this year. It shows in our ranking.

Starting point is 00:47:17 It shows in our numbers. And I just feel so blessed to be the host of the show. And I hope to host this show for many, many years. Whatever this show evolves to, I'll be here for a long time. Guys, this is my passion. I'm here to help you listen, learn, and profit. Even when we're old and profiting, I'll be around.

Starting point is 00:47:35 And I just love all you guys. I think that my life would be so much worse if I didn't have this podcast and if I didn't have all these listeners who keep pushing me to be better and better. You guys are a big, big, big part of my journey. And so thank you so much for listening to the show. And if you guys haven't yet,

Starting point is 00:47:55 I want you to find us on YouTube. YouTube was a big priority this year. We've got all of our videos on YouTube. I'd love for you to subscribe. And if you haven't yet and you want to give me a New Year's gift or a holiday gift, the best thing that I would ask for would be to write us an Apple podcast review. Write us a five-star Apple podcast review or a review or comment on your favorite podcast platform, whether you listen to CastBox or Player FM or Spotify, a rating, comment review,

Starting point is 00:48:24 whatever you can do in the app to show that you like our show and increase our social proof would be greatly appreciated. I also wanted to give a big shout out to my team. I have an amazing team at Yap Media. There's over 40 employees at Yap Media. We had a year full of ups and downs. And I want to take time to shout out my amazing production team. Shout out to Jason. He's my podcast producer, the production director at Yap Media.

Starting point is 00:48:50 He's so talented. If you guys noticed, we got a new podcast intro theme music this year. Our podcast sounds better than ever. our sound quality has been totally leveled up. And he is such a big part of the future at Yap. And is one of the reasons why hopefully I'll be one of the most famous and top female podcasters in the world. I guess technically I am, but I want to be Oprah Winfrey level.

Starting point is 00:49:14 Like definitely not there yet. Still have lots of room to grow. And I also want to shout out Matt Quant. He is an audio engineer here at Yap. Amelia, who is our production assistant. Myra and Hasham who help us book guest interviews, Cameron for helping us with our social promotion, Paul for helping us on YouTube.

Starting point is 00:49:39 We've got such an amazing, amazing team here at Yap Media. So shout out to all of you guys for supporting the show who are tuning in and also those who are behind the scenes. It's not just a one woman show. You know, I'd like to think that, but it's definitely not. There's lots of help here at Young and Profiting Podcast. and I love everybody who supports the show externally and internally. Well, this is your podcast, Princess Halitaha,

Starting point is 00:50:04 signing off until next year.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - 2022 in Review, What I Learned From Interviewing 50+ People at the Top of Their Game | Human Behavior | YAPSnacks

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