Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Entrepreneurship, Feet, and Branding with Hala Taha and Jason Ames | AskHala

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Hala’s text community sent in all kinds of questions for her to answer. Join her and YAP Media’s Production Director, Jason Ames, as they answer questions from listeners and fans about developing entrepreneurial skills, how to build a brand from scratch, the best marketing strategies for beginning entrepreneurs, how to onboard new clients, and Hala’s experience juggling a full-time job with her side hustle!  Sponsored by : Open Door Capital - Go to investwithodc.com to learn more! Jordan Harbinger - Check out jordanharbinger.com/start for some episode recommendations Constant Contact - Go to constantcontact.com to get started for free today Faherty - Head to fahertybrand.com/yap and use code YAP at checkout to get 20% OFF! Shopify - Go to shopify.com/profiting, for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features Social Media: Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on Clubhouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com

You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halitaha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, and that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions.

If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of ex-FBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and best-selling authors. Our subject matter ranges from enhancing productivity, how to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the sub-examination. button because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast. Hey everybody, what's going on? This is Hala, your host of Young and Profiting Podcast. And today we're doing a special episode and Ask Hala Anything episode. And my team has curated questions from our text community, from social, from even our

reviews. So I'm really excited to see some of these questions and hopefully answer them as best as I can. So I have Jason here, our production director. and how's it going to work? Hey, everybody. So we got, as Hollow was saying, a bunch of questions. It was really awesome to see the engagement that we got when we reached out to people. People were really excited to do the series.

And so if you haven't submitted questions yet, if you haven't joined the Yap text community, I don't know what you've been doing with your life. But now is a good time to do it. You can submit questions. We're going to do more episodes like these. Holla, do you know off the top of your head? Yes. You text, yeah, to 28046, and that's how you join.

And you can ask me anything. And I check those every single day. So I'll respond to you right away, but then we get to shout you out on episodes like this. Awesome. So like I said, we got a bunch of questions, a lot of different topics, entrepreneurship, marketing, work live, podcasting. So we're going to start here with some entrepreneurial questions, start a business type of questions. Are you ready to get into it? Let's go.

Okay. So our first question is. from Brian Hawkins. And his question is, what is the best and safest way to get started in entrepreneurship? Well, first of all, shout out to Brian Hawkins because I definitely recognize him from social media. He's a huge support. So shout out to you.

Thank you for being part of the Yap Bam. So I would say the safest way, it's not necessarily the quickest way, but the safest way would be to start a side hustle. And also to test your idea first before you actually go ahead. and spend too much money. So I would say that you should spend around 200 to 500 bucks on your first idea. See if you can get one sale, two sales, three sales. Once you know that you can sell it without much, without a website, without a logo,

and just using your personal connections, the DMs and your social media, you know your friends and family, then you know you have somewhat of product market fit because you didn't just blast money in Facebook ads and got lucky. because if you put enough money in Facebook ads, you're going to get sales. You want to see if you can get them naturally. And then you can start to scale little by little as a side hustle

and grow it until hopefully you can quit your full-time job. Yeah. Okay, so let's say Brian does this. He starts a side hustle. He's doing his thing. He's doing well. At what point do you think it's safe for him to go all in on it and say like,

whatever he's doing right now, he's going to quit his job or whatever it is and he's going to go all in on the entrepreneurs. thing. So I would say as long as you can cover your monthly expenses and maybe you had three months saved up at least, I think that would be a good sign to say that you're ready to take the leap and to take a chance on this idea. So I would wait until you're generating sales that are comparable to what you're making at your full-time job. And then you're really not taking much of a hit. So I think that would be your goal and to have some savings just in case so that if you needed to pause and actually apply to

get a real job. You've got some buffer and not necessarily a real job because your entrepreneurship endeavor is a real job. But if you needed to go back to corporate or working for another company, you'd have enough time to do that without being in a bad situation. Yeah, I love that. And as you're talking, I was reminded of one thing I've heard Alex Hermose talk about, you know, I'm a huge fan of. We have to get them on the podcast. I know. Alex! We're going to get him on the podcast. You better freaking come on Yap. We're calling it in right now. So I remember him talking about how, and let me preface this with,

I think one of the safest things that you can do is really develop your skill set as an entrepreneur, right? Because if you're really valuable in the marketplace on your own, if whatever your entrepreneurial idea is fails, you can go get a good paying job. Yes. And Alex's point was when he got really good at sales, he was never scared to fail as an entrepreneur again because he always knew he could go sell cars or he could go get some sort of sales position and be earning six figures.

So yeah, that came to mind for me as you were talking. I love that. Yeah. Here's an interesting question for you, Hall of based on that. So if I was interested in entrepreneurship, but I didn't really have like a clear idea for like a business that I wanted to start right now, but I knew that I wanted to start working in that direction. So I made the decision, okay, I'm going to invest in my skill set first while I like try and think of an idea. What skill would you recommend somebody who wants to step into entrepreneurship?

Like, what's the first thing that they should start developing so that they're ready to take that next step? I think first starting at the things that you're passionate about and writing that down, all the different things that you're really curious about naturally that you have fun doing and learning about. I feel like that's really important to kind of think through. And I think it's also important to think through the existing skills that you have and think about what you're naturally good at. Like, are you good at computer related things? Are you good with your hands?

Are you, do you have an artist's eye? Like, what are the things that you're naturally good at? And what are the skills you've been naturally good at that you can kind of keep learning and expanding and really go deep on knowing that you love them and that you're naturally good at? I would say that's where I would lean into. So for me, I was always really good at graphic design, like very naturally. And I'm not the best, like, drawer either.

But I remember being really good at graphic design. And that's one of the things that I really leaned into, even with this podcast. And one of the reasons why I'm successful with this podcast is because of all the cool graphics I made on social media to promote the show. And that's just a little example of how you can take nuance skill and use it for your company and business, even though that's not the primary skill that's needed to execute that business. Yeah, that reminds me of what Marcus Buckingham talks about who you've had on the show, really doubling down on your strengths. And I have a similar story in getting into business and

entrepreneurship where, like, I really love music and have been a passionate musician my whole life. And I just made the decision that I was going to get really good at audio engineering and start producing music. And then that one skill, led to a bunch of other things. And I just kept leveling up and taking on more responsibility and gone to podcasting. And yeah, so I love that.

Yeah, and eventually you get so good at what you know, you start training other people building a team and then you focus on the next thing. So then it's like tackling video editing or tackling copywriting or, you know, hacking social media channels. And just you keep leveling up those skills. And it's the best thing in the world.

Like you said, it's security. It's job security. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So thank you, Brian for that question. Thank you, Brian Hawkins. Yeah. So our next question here comes from probably the most active member of our community. Her name's Kate Ponzi. So Kate's question for you is about branding. And she wants to know how you went about creating your brand when you were just starting out. I love this question. So one thing I'll say is that I just took action right away. I didn't worry that much about having a logo and having brand guidelines and having a very consistent look and feel. Now, eventually we evolved to that, of course. But I think a lot of people get paralyzed in the planning and they don't worry about the big picture stuff first and the priorities first. And they wait until they have everything ready before they launch. And then it's not even a good idea. I basically always tested the waters with everything until I started to realize what people liked and I started testing things. I realized that people like bright colors. I really stood out on LinkedIn with bright colors.

I started doing animations and cartoon looking things on LinkedIn early on. This was about four years ago when I started the show. And I noticed that people really like that. So I kind of leaned into that kind of graphical illustration kind of look and feel. And eventually it evolved into the brand that we have today that if you're watching on video, you can see in my background, the bright colors, there's drawings and things like that, and our Young and Profiting logo, which has evolved several times. So brand is always ever evolving. It evolves with who you're trying to target, how your brand and your messaging is evolving.

For us, we turned into a social media and podcast agency as well. And so we had to kind of level up our brand and make sure that it looked professional. Just get started, start experimenting, post things up, see what people will. like, dislike, and once you have some information, then you can really spend time on creating standard brand guidelines, fonts, colors, color combinations, the shapes that you use, the patterns, the logo and all the different things that you need to consider when it comes to logo placement. Nice.

Thank you for that question. Kate. Thanks, Kate. Okay, so our next question here is from listener, Sean O'Leary. Sean is a big fan. Shout out to Sean O'Leary. Shout out to Sean. So his question is about marketing, and he's curious, if he's a beginner just starting a business,

what sort of marketing strategy would you advise that he uses? And how is whatever initial strategy he comes up with, how is that going to change over time? And like, how often is he going to need to be rethinking his marketing strategy? So first things first, what I'll say is pick one platform. Really study who your audience is, where they hang out, and concentrate on one platform. Don't go super wide, just go deep, learn everything about that platform, all its features, be consistent, experiment. That's super, super key.

In terms of a framework for content strategy, I would go to Kelly Roach. She's got this amazing book called Conviction Marketing. She's got a pyramid of content marketing. And the way doesn't work is that the bottom layer is how to content. and that's the stuff that you're educating, you're showing that you're a thought leader in the space, that you are the expert, you're teaching people how to do stuff,

you're providing immense value. You're not doing any sort of sales. You're just educating people, providing free valuable content. So that's the first foundational level of the pyramid. The next is hope marketing, which is inspiring your audience, making them feel like they're connected with you.

And then lastly, Conviction Marketing, which is announcing how you different, yourself in the marketplace and making what you sell known within your marketplace. So I love her little conviction marketing pyramid. I think it's a great strategy. It's a great balance when it comes to content. So I'd highly recommend you get that book by Kelly Roach. And that should help you get started on your journey. Yeah, totally. And one thing I would add to that too, like if you're just starting out and you're thinking about marketing, really think about

creating a super valuable service. Oh yeah. Because if you create a, a service that sells itself, then like, you don't need to spend a ton of time on marketing. Oh, I have to add to that. That's a great, great point. The other thing is social proof. Yeah. If you have examples of you doing what you say you can do and use cases, and if you've done it on yourself even, that's going to help you so much more. The hardest thing is getting your first handful of customers to prove that you know what you're doing. And if you can't do it for other people, do it for yourself. Do it for free. Make sure to have proof that shows you know what you're doing. 100%. I love that advice. And just thinking back to the question of like, where would he get started?

I'm not sure that there's something more valuable he could do than come up with a service. Go and offer that service to some people. Even if it's at like a really discounted rate, I'm not a big fan of free, but you know, you got to do what you got to do to get a couple of people that will back you. And that social proof will allow you to feel a lot more confident in your marketing of saying, it's not just me who's saying these things. I have other people that have done it. And you don't need a ton. Just like two reviews. Thank you for the question, Sean. Appreciate you. Let's see what else we got here. Yeah, shout out to Sean. You really are very supportive. Hold tight, everyone. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors.

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Hiring, Indeed is all you need. What's up, young and profitors? I remember when I first started Yap, I used to dread missing important calls. I remember I lost a huge potential partnership because the follow-up thread got completely lost in my messy communication system. Well, this year, I'm focused on not missing any opportunities. and that starts with your business communications.

A missed call is money and growth out the door. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled QUO, the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one rated business phone system on G2, and it works right from an app on your phone or computer. The way Quo works is magic for team alignment. Your whole team can handle calls and texts from one shared number, and everyone sees the full conversation.

It's like having access to a shared email inbox, but on a phone. And also Quo's AI can even, even qualify leads or respond after hours, ensuring your business stays responsive, even when you finally logged off. It makes doing business so much easier. Make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try quo for free plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com slash profiting. That's QUO.com slash profiting. Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. Okay, so this is related to Sean's question. So I think this is a good follow up. This is from an anonymous person.

And they also want to start a business. And they're curious what the best, most effective way to get their first clients is. Okay, I like this one. So first of all, I would look through all of your first connections on LinkedIn. And I would start there. You can attack them in the DM. Same thing with your followers on Instagram.

So in the DMs on your social media sites, I would go through your phone contacts, your WhatsApp channels. I would go through your email. And I would think of all the different people that you have relationships with and start there. Then I would use LinkedIn to actually do some targeted reach out and cold outreach.

So on LinkedIn, you can filter by job title, location, company size. You can actually go target specific companies. So let's say you offer certain services. that a certain industry uses. You can go find companies in that industry, go see who works there, then target it that way based on their title. So there's so many different ways

that you can target specific personas on LinkedIn. And so I would advise that you study how to do that. You get really good at it. You come up with casual engaging DM copy that doesn't sound super salesy and is very inviting. And you start inviting these people to your network using a personalized connection and inviting them to your network,

then following up with a nice DM, and have real conversations, get to know people, their problems, and let them know about your services. The other thing that you can do is reach out to somebody that you look up to that you could potentially learn from and offer them free services or like a lightly paid internship and hone your skills that way and get your first kind of client that way and testimonial. Yeah, I love the LinkedIn outreach strategy. when I became a story brand certified guide, that was a big question for a lot of people

that were in the program of like gaining their first clients. And they said exactly what you just said. They said, go on LinkedIn, reach out to your first connection and say, hey, I'm doing this. And it was amazing how many people got their first clients in just week one from doing that. Yeah.

It was incredible. That is like a gold mine, LinkedIn DMs, especially people that already have some context of who you are. You know, they've already kind of heard your name, seen your posts. If you've done good work on social, at least half consistently, they have some sort of trust in you. And so I think it's a great way to get new clients. Yeah. Did you do a lot of outreach when you first started Yap?

Yes. Are you kidding? I pulled each listener one by one from the DMs. I remember the first thing I did. Yes. Sorry, sorry. I know you did a ton of outreach for the podcast. I was for Yap Media.

Oh, no. I actually have never done outreach in the DMs for YAPMedia, not once. And I'm thinking about doing it these days because we're scaling really quickly. And so now I have more of an opportunity and I guess bandwidth to take on more clients. But lead generation came from the podcast. So for me, the people who came on the show were authors, celebrities, CEOs, the type of people who would love services from YAPMedia and our target client. You know, we don't really do marketing for the ad.

average Joe. It's more for like the celebrity type profiles. And so they were a fit. And usually at the end of an interview, they'd ask me more about my services. It would lead to a discovery call maybe later the next week. And most of my clients have been on Yap or are referred from my existing clients. So totally different model, not cold outreach. It's more of a boutique service. I'm not all about volume. I'm about high ticket. And so for that reason, I'm really strategic. with who I select as a client. Great. Okay.

Speaking of scaling, taking on more clients, we have a question here from Kevin Harding. Okay. And he's got a pretty clear goal for his business. He's trying to get to 20 clients that are 5K a month clients. Mm-hmm. So Kevin, we're wishing you the best of luck on that. I love that goal. Yeah.

So I love that he has a clear goal. So his question is, in scaling what systems are automations have you used that have been supportive in onboarding new clients while also allowing you to nurture and maintain the existing relationships in your business? In terms of systems, for me, Slack is super important. So at Yap Media, we have a Slack channel for every single client. Their entire team is in that Slack channel. That's where they have ongoing day-to-day communications. I also think, obviously, having meeting software, that's a no-brainer, but going a step further, making sure you record and transcribe all your meetings. So you guys

keep your actions really clear, having a place to put all your to-dos from those meetings. Using ClickUp and Conbon boards is something that we love to do at Yap, where you basically create a process and then create tasks and move them throughout the Conban board as you get them done and have stand-ups to understand where your team is at. And so I think having clear end-to-end processes, these clear deliverables, clear roles and responsibilities, I think all of those things really help things stay aligned. Yeah, the clear deliverables piece is really important as you're trying to scale. Because when you have three to five clients, it's a lot easier to do something custom for each of them when they're like, oh, can we do something this way? Like, I don't really want to do that,

but sure, I could do that for you, but that's hard to scale that to 20. And since it sounds like as a service-based business, you know, since you're getting clients and things like that, I would say just keep your services super standard. That's a hard lesson that we learned at Yap. We tried to be standard, but then we'd be really flexible with our clients and we'd do something extra here, like a different number of posts per week or whatever it was. And then it just gets unmanageable because you have to think about, well, this person gets this and this person gets that. And everyone's confused because they might be working on multiple clients that have different processes for the same outcome. And that's just confusing. So make sure you have standard processes, standard offering.

Pricing does not have to be standard. We could talk about that. Yeah. We don't have the full picture for Kevin here. But let's assume like he's got five clients and he's at 5K. Okay. And he's trying to get to 20 at 5K. So how should he think about his pricing as he is scaling up? Do you have any advice for him on that? Yeah, I would say, especially when you're at that level where it's not like a $99 offer that you're just kind of selling on a website, a $5,000 offer, you're going to be on a call. You're likely going to have a PowerPoint deck that outlines your services and what you're

offering maybe use cases. You're going to get to know the client before you give them a price. You're going to get to know how much they want it, what kind of revenue model they have for their own business. what is their pricing for their offering that they're trying to sell. You're also going to want to try to find out how well they're doing without you, depending on what your service is. Just to make sure you can get a gauge in terms of what their budget is.

Also, what I would do is, before you even hop on a call, qualify what their budget is. Maybe you have a form where you list off for Yap. We've got like different tiers. Like do you have under $100,000 a year? Is it $2.50 a year? Is it whatever it is? And you kind of outline the different tiers.

then from the start, you know what they're working with, and you can basically pitch them a price that isn't going to make them decline, but you can try to get on the higher end and always negotiate down to 5K. So it's like if you know somebody's making good money, they're doing well, they really want your service, they're really impressed,

they had a good experience on your discovery call and maybe any follow-up calls and emails. Try to pitch them 7K and see if they say yes. And if they do and continually say, say yes, then you know that you can kind of bump up your offer and even start pitching higher. And Jason, you're actually really great at pricing strategy. So I'd love to hear what you think. Yeah. So with this particular business model, again, we don't have the full picture here, but I'm guessing if he's shooting for 20 clients, that there's limited inventory. So if you have

limited inventory, each of those slots, it makes a big difference for the business. if for each of those slots to be optimally priced. And so let me give you an example of that. So let's say you've been selling at 5K and you're comfortable selling at 5K and that's working well for you. But you could potentially be selling at 7K. Maybe you're not converting as many sales,

but again, that might be just fine if you have limited inventory. If you have lots of leads coming in And here's a good rule of thumb for you on this. If you're converting like almost all of your sales, I would say depending on the business, definitely if you're converting more than 50% on these kinds of sales, your prices are too low. There's some different variables in here.

But I would say the important pieces to pick up on are like how many clients can you actually take and then how many leads do you have coming in? And what's your conversion rate on those leads? and then experiment with the pricing to see how that changes your conversion rate. Just to make it a drastic example, let's say you're doing this for 5K, but if you added a little bit more on and maybe made it more of a boutique offer, you could be doing it for 10K. Yeah.

So at this point, you need half as many clients, which means half as much work, half as many employees, half the input that's coming in to earn the same amount. So it's definitely something that's worth thinking about and worth experimenting with. The other thing that I would say that we didn't mention, which is really important, is to understand how much it costs to put on this service. And don't forget to count your time as the entrepreneur, even if you're not necessarily doing the work, even if you're outsourcing it, it's still your time on the sales call or whatever it is, the way that you contribute.

So make sure you know that cost. And then I would triple it at least. And I think that's a good gauge at where you should start because there's always expenses that you don't think of and startup costs in terms of onboarding a client and things like that. Yeah, for a service-based business, typically the back of hand number that I use is like between 20 and 30 percent operating expenses for whatever the service is that you're offering. So if you're selling it $5,000 a month, can you deliver that service? with $1,000 a month operating expenses, that would be 20%, because there's other things are going to come up. You need to make investments back in your business. There's taxes. There's your salary and all that stuff. So Michael McCallowitz is a great resource,

this Profit First book about how you should sort of go about structuring your business. In his book, Profit First, he gives a bunch of tables for stuff that we're talking about right now, as far as like if your top of line revenue is this, what should your operating expenses be? How much should you be paying yourself and stuff like that? It's a good place to start for sure. It really is. Okay. This question is from Tamara Young McCoy.

And their question is, how long did you work your nine to five while working on your side hustle? So I started Young and Profiting podcast in April of 2018. and that was my first side hustle. And this was something that I did more of a hobby, but it was still a side hustle because I did it very consistently. And I was building an asset that I would later on monetize. But I was very aware of the fact that it would take a long time

to make money on this. And it was very much a way to be of service and give back. And so I did the podcast for two years as a side hustle while working in corporate. Then while working at Disney Streaming, services during COVID in May of 2020, I launched the first beginnings of Yap Media, social, and podcast agency. And like I mentioned earlier, I took it really slow. I started off with video services first. And then I moved on to managing LinkedIn profiles. Then I moved on to managing

podcasts. Then eventually Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and then YouTube. And so I just layered on all these things and created this agency now that has 60 people and 20 or so high profile clients. And so it took me about eight months into launching the agency. So I'm not sure about the exact mess. So I launched in May of 2020. That's when I first started. I incorporated the business in July of 2020. And then in February of 2021, I quit my corporate job at Disney. So a little less than a year, like eight-ish months, it took me until I was able to quit my full-time job. And when I launched app media, that's when I first started monetizing. The podcast monetization came about a year after launching the agency. The agency actually helped fuel the growth of my show.

And that's because I was able to reinvest in my show. I was able to turn my volunteers into paid team members who are more consistent. I was able to innovate because I was getting all this money that I didn't have before to innovate my show and to level up the quality and to do experimentation. And also at the same time, right before the agency, I was doing a lot of cool things, like reaching out to podcast players and getting sponsorships with players like CastBox or Player FM and having them promote my show. And then once I grew an audience, I was able to monetize and a substantial audience because you really don't make money in podcasts until you're getting like 100,000 downloads a month. So it took me a while to get that.

there. I had loyal, consistent fans, but in terms of the volume where sponsorship money was desirable for me, considering I had other income streams, I really started to take it on once I was hitting 100,000 downloads a month. And were you making as much money from Yacht Media when you left Disney as you were making from Disney? My company was making way more money. I think we were already making about $100,000 a month or $80,000 a month by the time that I left. Disney. So I was making six figures, but I definitely knew I could pay myself as much as Disney could. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Happy New Year, Yap, gang. I just love the unique energy of the new year. It's all about fresh

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Okay. So you had some questions about work-life balance and entrepreneurship. How do you think about work-life balance two parts of this? In the context of what you went through to build what you have today, what are your thoughts on work-life balance during that period? And then how are you thinking about it today now that you are where you are? It's so funny that you're bringing this up because I've wrote a post about this today on Instagram, like quite a long story about this specific topic.

So in terms of the last four years, I would say that I worked my butt off and I delayed gratification and delayed gratification. And that's because I started a Young and Profiting podcast. I was obsessed with it from day one. I started building a team from episode two. I had supporters. I built systems and processes. And like I said, I became obsessed with working on Yap. I would work 16 to 18 hours a day. I would be working my corporate job, working on Yap before, working on Yap during lunch, working on Yap at night, sleeping, not sleeping until 1 a.m.

Working on the train even, doing my social media activities on the train there and back. That was always a routine that I had. And so every single minute of the day that was free, was dedicated to Yap, other than sometimes making dinner for my boyfriend or hang out with him. But I was lucky because I was with someone and maybe subconsciously strategically. I was with somebody who worked at night that kind of left me alone after we hung out for an hour or saw each other for a couple hours at night. And then I was able to continue and work on my side hustle and it gave me an unlocked three or four hours where people might be watching TV or doing like unproductive things with their time. I really focus on.

being productive. And I got in the habit of never watching TV. I literally never turn on a TV, ever. Even like if I have free time, it just doesn't call me. I'm just so used to not watching TV. I'd rather be learning and doing something productive. And so I maximize my time. I feel like I sacrificed a lot. Missed a lot of parties. Missed a lot of vacations. Was a little bit selfish in terms of my time with other people, even myself, like not going to the doctor and like things that aren't necessarily healthy. The things I made time for was Yap, my boyfriend, and working out. And that's like all I made time for and everybody else was on the back burner. And yeah, I just focused on Yap for four years and I don't regret it at all because now I have such a

great work life balance. I'm able to go get a massage in the middle of the day. Go get my nails done. go shopping, relax on the weekends, not even open my laptop for two days over the weekend. That was unheard of before. I worked every weekend, Saturday, Sunday. Like, if I didn't have four hours to work on the weekend, it could be a big problem because for a long time, Yap was a job that I created, not a business that I created. It was a job that I created for myself to create the dream life that I wanted. And it took me a while to like break out of it being like just a job that I was,

again, chained to just like I was chained to in my corporate life because I was building it and building a foundation and setting people up for success. Now, the thing that I still have to work on is my podcast because I'm irreplaceable. It's my show. It's my voice. I record all the stuff. My agency, so much of it, and very recently, quite honestly, is not run by me anymore. I have a great big team and great processes. And I still, you know, give feedback and improve things and innovate. and things like that. But in terms of working on the day-to-day, I'm very much out of it.

And it allows me so much flexibility to do whatever I want. And I have to say, for four years, I was very regiment. I worked, like I said, 16, 18-hour days. I had very consistent routines. I didn't do anything fun.

I feel like I didn't travel. I didn't make great relationships or new friends during that time. I was very much focused on myself and Yap. And I don't regret it because I feel like we have something so special now that I'll have for the rest of my life and that will continue growing in terms of its value because I've just, I already created it.

And people can't believe it. They'll be like, how the heck did you do this? Like, and especially because they're not working as hard as I used to. So some people, if they just met me, they're like, well, how the heck did you do this? If you're going out on the weekend and you're having fun. And it's like, well, because for four years, all I did was work. And before that for 10 years, you know? And it's like, So like for four years, like I did double time and more. I still work really hard. It's just weird working regular hours, you know? It feels so light.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of conversation happening right now about work-life balance. And what I would say to that is like the right work-life balance for you is when you're doing what you want to do. Yeah. In a given moment, are you doing what you want to do? Like if you want to work, get it done. Yeah. Get it done and work. And when you need some time off and you feel that and you're like, I need a break, take a break. Yeah. And when you feel so in love with what you're doing, you're so happy to do it. It's fun and you want to learn and keep going and get better and better and

better and prove to yourself that you can tackle your goal that you've set out to do. So I feel like the best thing to do is to do what you love. Yeah, do what you love. Don't let other people put their judgments on you. If you're in tune with yourself and your values and you have a goal and you know what you're working on, just work towards that and be confident moving towards that. Right on. Okay, so related question here, in working that much and working that hard, how did you maintain that kind of focus during that time period while you're working on your side hustle and you're working full time? And this question is from Francis, by the way. So I'm just a dedicated person.

And I believe in this quotes, how you do anything is how you do everything. And so I was working really hard at Disney too. Like I was crushing it at Disney. I was working really hard for them and took what I did for them very seriously during the hours that they hired me to do what I was supposed to do at Disney. So I don't want people to get that wrong thinking that I was only focused on Yap. I was also focused on being like a great girlfriend. You know what I mean?

And like that was also like a big priority. So all my priorities, I feel like I tried to do really, really well at 150%. And in terms of how I stayed focused, especially with Yap, because if you think about it, we didn't really get much traction or make money until year two. So most people would have given up. But I didn't give up because I had like, you know, hundreds of fans that really enjoyed the show, maybe a couple thousand, you know, a year into it. And I wanted to do it. It was something that I enjoyed doing that I felt like I was good at, that I felt like I could scale and that I had an advantage to some degree because I had started a little bit earlier than everyone else. And podcasting started to get super, super hot. And so I just think the excitement and the small wins, taking action every day is really rewarding. I'm a very actionable person and I kind of just like shoot from the hip sometimes, but that works to my advantage.

So I'll have an idea and I'll be like, oh, I'm going to email these 30 people tonight and come up with this email copy and pitch them XYZ and try to make some money. And then think stick and you get excited and you want to figure out if that's something that you want to continue doing. And so I just think being actionable, putting myself out there, getting small wins, embracing those wins, learning, getting good at things. That's the type of stuff that keeps you going. When you're always trying to think of a plan, when you're always trying to think of what could go wrong or you're so hesitant to like take any sort of action and try, that's when I think you get demotivated. And I also think repeating the same thing over and over again and not learning how to improve is also what demotivates people. I feel like as soon as I felt like something wasn't working, I just kept experimenting and trying to learn what would work. And so there was no way I was going to fail. And because I was getting the small wins, it was very rewarding. And so they were small wins, small wins, small wins. And then eventually it like accelerated very, very fast.

Like I started the agency. I started making $30,000 a month by month two. And I just kept leveling up, started investing in my show, landed the cover of podcast magazine, interviewed Matthew McConaughey. And then like all these things like happened one by one by one by one. And now it's starting to be like slower growth because you can't skyrocket forever. And so it was a long time coming, but I think the consistency is key and staying motivated and is key and goes back to doing what you love and what's fun.

Yeah, a lot of good stuff there. A couple of different things popped up for me as you were talking. And the first one is something that I think of all the time from Ray Dalio. And it's that you can have almost anything you want in life, but you can't have everything you want in life. And so you were talking about you're working all the time, but your priorities were clear. It's like, I'm crushing at Disney. I'm crushing it YAP.

And I have this important relationship in my life. And the rest of the stuff, like, I got to let it fall away, not going to the parties, not doing these other things. And so having that level of focus and then going after it, that prioritization, really understanding those key things that jumped out at me there. Yeah. And a lot of people talk about this idea of working backwards from the end of your life. to come up with what these priorities really are. So what do you want to be remembered for? What do you want people to say at your funeral?

Like, that's something that you can write is your eulogy and how you want to be remembered and you can work backwards from that. And that helps you realize what is truly, truly important for you. And sometimes it means sacrificing and delaying gratification for several years so that you can have a foundation

and then eventually move away from that and start to live the dream life that you took time to build. And it just takes time. But it's only temporary. And that's the thing that I feel like a lot of people forget is that you can work really hard for a short amount of time and level up your life completely. Change your entire life.

Yeah. What you mentioned about not quitting and how most people would have quit. It reminded me of one of my all-time favorite quotes. It's more of a story from Joe Satriani, who's a guitar player, a really famous guitar teacher taught people like Kurt Hammond and some other famous guitar players. And he was asked who his best students were. And his response was, you've never heard of any of them. And the interviewer was confused, like, what do you mean? And he said, they all quit. All my best students quit. Wow. The people that you've heard of are they're just the ones that didn't quit and just kept going.

Yeah, that's been a really powerful quote for me in my life story for me. Yeah. Wow. Cool. Well, this has been fun. I want to end with one fun question. Are you ready? Okay. Let's do it. Okay. So this is from Vitar.

I hope you're, I'm saying your name right. Vitar Romero. And it's, what is your biggest dream today? I want to be the biggest podcaster in the world, the biggest female podcaster in the world. And everybody, when I say that,

they're like, not just the biggest female. Well, I feel like I can really be the biggest female podcaster in the world. I feel like that lane is open. is open for me and I can accomplish it. And I feel like I'm trying to line things up now. For a long time, I was focused on Yap, the brand, the company. And now it's finally like me time. I really feel like this is me time. I was building the foundation for everything. And now I get to focus on myself, building the show, growing our audience, really becoming like recognizable, growing on Apple. and outside of the platforms

like growing on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, like all TikTok. We're starting TikTok and really getting serious. And, you know, we've leveled up our studio. I have Jason now, who's our executive producer and production director. And he's amazing, super talented.

You know, of course I'm going to pick the best of the best. He's better than me, which I don't mean to sound cocky, but that's hard to do. And yeah, I just, I really feel like that's going to, to be my destiny. I feel like everything that I did was the path I had to take to get to the ultimate destination. And I could have taken many paths. But this is the one that I created for myself,

this revenue generating podcast, this agency that supports me doing stuff that most podcast wouldn't even dream of. Like I created a way to make myself the biggest podcaster in the world. And to me, that's just so cool, like that, like, I had a goal and then I created all this other stuff that just helps me achieve my goal faster than everybody else and more likely than anyone else. And so I'm just super hype. I really believe it. I believe in you, Hala. That's a great place to end. And if you're listening to this episode and you want to help Hala become the number one female podcaster in the world, you can help her right now.

by sharing this episode or any of your favorite Yap episodes with a friend that really is the biggest way that we get organic growth is just word of mouth and people sharing episodes with people that they love and care about and that they want to have the same great experience of listening to the podcast that they are having. So that's my plug for us. Thank you. And big news announcement. Thank you to my Yapam who's subscribed and written a review on Apple because we are now the number one how to podcast on Apple for like over a week now. So awesome stuff. Super excited. Getting closer and closer to our goal. Great. Love it. All right. This has been fun. So for the people that haven't already signed up for the text community,

give them the code one more time so they can text in their questions so we can get some more questions and keep doing these. Yeah. Let's keep doing this. Text Yachta 2046 and you guys can text podcast questions, marketing questions, side hustle questions, entrepreneurship questions, questions about my feet or personal life, whatever you guys want to text in, go for it. That's coming up in the next episode. Text yeah to 28046 and maybe we'll read some of these foot fetish comments to give everybody a laugh. All right. Well, this has been fun, Hala. This is your host, Hala and Jason signing up.

Cheers, everybody.