Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: How Life’s Hardest Moments Can Spark Business Breakthroughs | Entrepreneurship | 7 Years of YAP

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Starting point is 00:01:25 slash deals. As AI is taking over, it's going to essentially replace entry-level jobs. And the number one way to build a moat around yourself is to actually build your personal brand. Let's say you went back and you were 18 again. Where would you start? Where would you go? I would 100% get into becoming some sort of an influencer. The creator economy is going to grow 17 times bigger than it is in the next two to three years. You wrote about how everyone's using AI on LinkedIn. People used to write paragraphs of comments. I used to have long conversations in the DMs.

Starting point is 00:02:02 LinkedIn was a real community. Now everyone's using AI to auto-generate all their comments. Is this even real? How would you approach choosing where you'd want to invest your time? Because as a young person, I do think that's one of our greatest assets. I think it just depends on... Yeah, fam, my life has taught me that there are moments that feel like the absolute worst. Moments you never saw coming, but sometimes that dark chapter can become the pathway to your biggest breakthrough.

Starting point is 00:02:45 Sometimes the year that you thought would break you ends up being the year that pushes you to rise higher than you ever thought possible. In this interview, I'm joining Jack Wagner on the Grateful podcast as part of my seven years of Yap celebration to share how the darkest chapter on my life became the launch pad for the multi-million dollar Yap media brand. You'll hear the story behind my entrepreneurship journey, the mindset shifts that transformed my life, and why your personal brand is your greatest asset in the age of AI. And real quick, if you're new to the show, make sure you hit that follow button right now because trust me, your future self will be glad you did it. let's dive into my interview on The Grateful Podcast. Halataha, welcome to the Grateful Podcast. Thank you for having me, Jack. I'm excited for this conversation.

Starting point is 00:03:31 I'm so, so excited that you're here. Diving into your story, one of the things that I found the most interesting and a pattern that I've found across many of the very successful guests that I've interviewed is that you turned what was your worst moment into all of the success that you have right now. To be a little more specific, 2020 you've said was your worst year. And yet at the end of 2020, you made it into your best year yet. You made it to be the catalyst for all the amazing growth that you've had to this point and even are going to continue to grow upon. So talk to me about what 2020 looked like for you and how you were able to turn something that was so tragic into something so amazing.

Starting point is 00:04:21 So 2020, I remember, started the year, is when COVID started bubbling up. And by March, COVID actually became a thing. And I remember in the offices, I was working at Disney at the time and they had just shut down. And literally the same day that the office is shut down, my sister calls me up. I was living in Brooklyn at the time, no car, I was living with my boyfriend. She calls me up. She says, mom, dad, your aunt, uncle, and your brother have COVID. My sister's a doctor, and she's like, you've got 30 minutes to pack up your bags if you want to come.

Starting point is 00:04:56 I'm going. Are you coming? And I was like, I guess so. Of course I'm going to come and help everyone. So I remember she picked me up and she brought hazmat suits. I don't know if you know what that is. It's like coverings where like you cover your whole face, your body. Because at that time, COVID was so scary. It was the scariest strain. Everyone was dying. The hospitals were packed. It was mortifying. So I'm like, okay, like I'm literally going home. I don't know if I'm going to survive or not. I get home, everyone is extremely sick. Me and my sister end up going to the basement

Starting point is 00:05:30 and making that our place to sleep and stay and eat and we're eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for like two weeks and we'd go upstairs and help everybody and cook or whatever. And it was so crazy, but everybody ended up starting to get better except for my dad. So my dad just got sicker and sicker. And we were trying everything. All my siblings are doctors.

Starting point is 00:05:50 We were trying everything, and at a certain point, we had to send him to the hospital. And I remember my dad looking at me and saying, Hala, if you guys send me to the hospital, I'm never coming back. And there was a certain point where we thought that was the only way we could save him. We couldn't do anything anymore. So we sent him to the hospital, and he was right. It was the last time I ever really got to see him even in person. In the hospitals, they weren't letting us visit because it was COVID.

Starting point is 00:06:16 So I remember being at my Disney job, working remotely. having my dad on Zoom. And in between my calls, I would sing to him and talk to him. And he was pretty much totally out of it at this point. And so it was just so crazy. He was so sick. And he ended passing away May 15th. So he's in the hospital for almost two months. And during the time that I was home, I got COVID. And during that time, because I got COVID, nobody wanted to hang out with me. None of my best friends, my boyfriend, even at the time that I was with for 10 years, I had the cooties because I had COVID, right? And it was really, really crazy at that time.

Starting point is 00:06:52 So I didn't hang out with anyone, but it gave me a lot of free time to think. And there was one woman who was very supportive of me. Her name is Heather Monaghan. And she was somebody who came on my podcast. And essentially, she didn't leave me alone. She was like, Hala, I love your videos. She was asking me how to make these videos. And so I was trying to train her.

Starting point is 00:07:11 And she's a very busy woman. So she's like, Hala, I'm not going to make these videos. I want you to do it for me. And I showed her, I had a team of 20 volunteers at the time. I showed her my Slack channel. I showed her all my processes. And she was like, I just had a call with VaynerMedia. I can give them my money or I could give you my money.

Starting point is 00:07:29 I want to be your first client. So I decided I was going to start this thing called Yap Media, a social media agency with Heather Monaghan as my first client. And I did that while my dad was in the hospital. I started this company. So she was paying me very little. She was paying me like $1,000 a month to do her videos, but then my second client was a billionaire, and he started paying me $30,000 a month to run his LinkedIn, his Instagram, and his podcast.

Starting point is 00:07:55 So everything changed at that point. And things just started accelerating. I got one client after another because my podcast was essentially a lead gen tool. The guests that would come on my show wanted to grow their LinkedIn, wanted to grow their podcast. Those were my services. And so I just kept selling. And then six months later, quit my job, got on the cover of podcasts. magazine because I was able to kind of reinvest in my show and build it really big on all these

Starting point is 00:08:19 different apps. And it ended up being my best year yet because I achieved my dream of being a top 100 podcaster by the end of that year. That's incredible. So what did you need to go through on the inside in order to make that shift? Because the way I like to think about it, I call this the grateful podcast. And that is a real form of gratitude to be able to turn something like that into what you turned it into. So talk to me through the journey that you went through, not only on the outside, we just heard that, but what was happening in here? Because I think that must have had to be really powerful, really difficult, but really transformative. Basically, I saw my dad on his deathbed, and my dad's Palestinian. He grew up extremely poor.

Starting point is 00:09:07 He grew up in one room with eight people, no running water, no electricity. And he grew up in Palestine, in war, basically at the start of all this stuff that we're hearing about now, right? And essentially, he knew that the only way that he could get out of town is to be the smartest kid in school and get a scholarship. And so all he did was just study and study and study. He ended up getting a scholarship, going to med school, becoming a surgeon, going to America, being chief of surgery to hospitals, opening up a medical center. And he was so successful. And to me, I knew he had dedicated his life to make sure that his kids would never suffer, never be hungry, have everything that they need. And he was such a generous man. He gave all his money away to charity to send

Starting point is 00:09:57 other kids to college. That was his passion. So when he was on his deathbed, I was like, I'm playing too small. I've been so privileged. I wasn't extremely spoiled growing up, but I've been so privileged. And I have an opportunity. to continue my family's legacy and 10x what my dad did. And here I am working this corporate job doing this podcast. It's not like I wasn't ambitious. I was like you doing a podcast on the side and this, this and that. But I was like, I need to play bigger. I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to be my own boss. And I feel like this is the universe. I just started deciding to just trust my gut and go with the flow. And it just led to so many powerful things. And so to your point, a lot of it was

Starting point is 00:10:42 gratitude for my father and everything that he did for us. And how can I make sure that I continue on this legacy and not play small? Your dad sounds like he was an amazing man. And I definitely see all of the drive that he instilled in you to do good for other people. It's really cool seeing how someone can influence someone else in their family to just create even more of an impact. If you think about the ripple effect, your father impacted so many people. And then his impact on you directly impacts all the people that you have an impact on. So how in your life are you looking to continue that ripple effect and maximize it so you can help as many people as you can

Starting point is 00:11:22 just as your dad did for you and so many others? I think when people describe my brand and even just meeting me in person, I think the number one thing that they say is inspirational. My goal is just to inspire more entrepreneurs, especially more female minority entrepreneurs, Because there's just not many of us out there. And so if I can inspire another woman to believe in herself, to go all in on their passions,

Starting point is 00:11:50 their dreams, and to build a company, build their own generational wealth, be independent, that's really the goal. And not only women, honestly, most of my listeners on my podcast are actually male. So I'm influencing a lot of young men as well to just go after their dreams and to be their own boss. And I think we're living in a really special time where, so many of us can become creator entrepreneurs. We own our distribution. It's easier than ever to become an entrepreneur. And I just want to make sure that I'm inspiring people and giving them educational tools and interviewing amazing people who teach them how to become the best entrepreneurs

Starting point is 00:12:26 they can be. So let's dive into that a little bit because we hear so many people saying we live in this amazing time. You can start something. But on the other side of that, there's the people of it are always giving you the quick fixes saying, oh, this is how you earn money while you sleep in two weeks. All you have to do is work two weeks. And I think a lot of young people especially are seeing that and they're bouncing around different things. They want so much. They're so ambitious. And they don't know where to start because they keep bouncing around from these different things, putting their eggs in all these different baskets and they're never really making any progress forward. It's this mirage of progress when really it's stagnation behind it,

Starting point is 00:13:12 if that makes sense. So let's say you went back and you were 18 again and you had to lose all the skills that you've stacked over these years. And you had all the resources of the current age. Where would you start? Where would you go? Where would you put your eggs? What basket would you put them in. So first of all, I partied way too much when I was younger. So if I could roll the time back. Chris Brown, right? Yeah, I did date Chris Brown when I was younger. That's crazy. But if I could roll back the time a bit, I wouldn't have partied as much, right? However, everything is a skill. So even though maybe partying wasn't the best use of my time, I'm really social, I'm really outgoing, I'm really fun. I'm really young energy. And a lot of that is because I was really fun when I was

Starting point is 00:14:03 younger and I still have that fun energy, right? So even partying is a skill that I've stacked and that has helped me network and so on. So I don't regret anything. But if I was 18 years old, starting all over again, I would 100% get into becoming some sort of an influencer, creating a personal brand and being a content creator. As AI is taking over, the most people that are at risk, unfortunately, are young people who don't have skills. AI is going to essentially replace entry-level jobs, and all the people that are already skilled, senior-level people that are 35, 40, even 30, they're going to be directing these entry-level

Starting point is 00:14:51 AI workers, essentially agents. And there's not going to be entry-level positions anymore, meaning that people aren't going to be able to acquire skills. So you are going to be left on your own to acquire skills. And the number one way to build a moat around yourself, whether it's AI or just competition in general, is to actually build your personal brand. And so my number one thing for anybody who's young would be doing exactly what you're doing, Jack, starting some sort of podcast, YouTube channel, Instagram channel, TikTok channel, whatever it is, lean into one channel, get really good at it, master it, and then move on to the next channel and just grow your personal brand because essentially that is your moat.

Starting point is 00:15:34 And like I was mentioning before, we're living in this amazing time period of creator entrepreneurship. The creator economy is going to grow 17 times bigger than it is in the next two to three years. So it's going to accelerate like crazy. We think it's already at its height and everybody thinks there's too much competition and there's no room. That is not true.

Starting point is 00:15:56 In the next two years, it's going to 17X. Okay? So it's not too late. And building your brand and becoming a creator is going to be the best way to diversify your income and to basically have control because once you have what I call

Starting point is 00:16:12 an audience-based business, it doesn't matter. You can always change what you sell. you've got your core audience already built in, and you can just adapt and pivot based on their needs, and you always have your customers. And that really is the future. And so I would say I would be figuring out how to go viral, get that free distribution online, understanding the algorithms, figuring out long-form content, understanding how to shoot video

Starting point is 00:16:37 and doing all that kind of stuff if I was your age. So where would school fit into that? The classic, you go to school, you get a job, right? And I know you went to school, you dropped out, but then you went back to school. So obviously, you're not fully on the side of no school. At least you haven't been all your life. I think school is right for some people. I think that for me, I had parents that paid for my school.

Starting point is 00:17:02 If I didn't, I don't know if I would go to school because I have a lot of friends that are still in their 30s paying off their student loan debt, which is just ridiculous. And so I think it just depends if you got parents that are going to pay for your school. school, then go for it because it gives you experience. You get to have a little bit more fun. It's also important to have fun in your life and live your life when you're younger. It's not just all about hustle, hustle, hustle, right? So it's like you get to find yourself. And another reason why school is good, especially if you go for like an MBA, at least in my experience, it was really a door opener. So I had basically worked at a radio station, interned. And once I was in my MBA, it opened the door to corporate because I got an MBA internship. And internships can open the door to like a career.

Starting point is 00:17:52 So most corporations are not going to hire an intern that's not in college, right? So for me, I think the number one reason to go to school would be to get some sort of an internship in the field that you want. But nowadays, I think it's becoming less and less relevant, to be honest. I think college is becoming less and less relevant. And personally, I don't think I learned a thing about anything that I'm doing today from school. I didn't really learn much from school. It was more hands-on learning on the internet. Yeah, 100%. What I found interesting in my just first, I guess, month and a half at school is you look at the business majors, and I'll try to talk to them because I do marketing for a clothing brand. I do my podcast. I'm like, oh, so what have

Starting point is 00:18:36 you learned? And I try to have a conversation. I'm like, oh, wow. They really are not learning anything. They're doing these PowerPoint presentation. That's not what marketing has become in this day and age. It's really interesting how far education seems to lag behind where the industry is at. So like you said, I dropped out of school and I was out of school for like three years and then I went back for one year and got my MBA. And I remember when I started corporate, I was 27 years old and I had never had a corporate job. Okay. And so I thought, oh my God, I'm going to be so behind. I'm going to be so stupid. I had imposter syndrome. I went there and I had built a blog and hacked Twitter and I was

Starting point is 00:19:18 doing really cool stuff, but I just never worked a corporate job. I was light years ahead of everyone. I was so much better at video editing, at graphic design, at SEO, at building websites, at coding. I was so much better than everybody else and I got promoted five times and five years within that company. And so it just goes to show institutional knowledge, whether it's college or a corporate job, it doesn't innovate fast enough. You just learn what everybody else knows. And the fastest way to learn is on the internet now, everything's available to you. So I totally agree with you. Hey, Yap gang. As a CEO, I'm always looking for ways to streamline our creative output at Yap. I need one place to handle everything, not just our website, but the entire look and

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Starting point is 00:20:46 framer.com slash design and use promo code profiting. Again, that's Framer.com slash design, promo code profiting. Rules and restrictions apply. Yeah, bam, of course before I built young in profiting, I had a million doubts. Every time I thought about starting, it just felt so daunting. didn't know if I was cut out for entrepreneurship, but one day I stopped putting it off and I turned my dream into a reality. Step by step, I built my dreams. And now I'm running a nearly eight-figure company. I bet a lot of you guys out there are thinking about starting a business, but you need a little push. Take this as your sign. It's time to stop thinking about what if and start doing. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to use Shopify. Shopify powers

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Starting point is 00:22:13 Again, that's Shopify.com slash profiting. At Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. and I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world. And when it comes to hiring, I no longer feel overwhelmed by finding that perfect candidate,

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Starting point is 00:23:09 You pay for the people that you hire. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com. Just go to Indeed.com slash profiting right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indie-dollar. Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash profiting. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. So one interesting thing about your journey is you did something that I think you hear a lot about from some of the top creators such as yourself, Alex Formosie, and it's work for someone

Starting point is 00:23:44 for free that knows more than you and gain experience from them. And you took it to an extreme. You did it for what, eight years where you were working for people? Three years. But then your part-time job at Disney where you were basically running something. Overall, you were doing a lot of work that you weren't getting financially compensated for. But you learn so much and you're able to transfer those skills to everything you're doing right now. So how would you approach choosing where you'd want to invest your time? Because as a young person, I do think that's one of our greatest assets. Where would you invest your time to get the most ROI? I think it just depends on what your goals are. At every stage in my career, except maybe now, I've had some sort of mentor

Starting point is 00:24:30 that I was doing something for free. So, for example, when I first started my company, Heather Monaghan, who I was mentioning before, was my business mentor. She was the one that told me to start my company. She's the one that told me to quit my job. I waited six months and was making over six figures a month with my agency before I quit my job at Disney, which was a full-time. That was a regular job. at Disney, right? Yeah. It took me six months because I was so scared. And I remember her yelling at me. She was in the grocery store, yelling at me, quit your job. And so then I did it. And everything took off because I listened to her and I quit my job. Then I was trying to grow my podcast. And have you heard of Jordan Harbinger? I have. Yeah, he's cool. Yeah. So he's like,

Starting point is 00:25:13 OG podcasts. I've been doing my podcast for seven years. He's been doing it for 12 years. So he's like, OG, OG podcast. And he's grown a really big show. And he's known to know a lot about podcast growth. So there was a certain point in my journey where I wanted to grow my podcast. Heather couldn't help me. Heather figured out how to get me to start my business, but Heather couldn't help me grow my podcast. She hadn't gone where I want to go. She hadn't grew her podcasts that big. So I wanted to have Jordan Harbinger as my mentor and I made it a thing. And so I invited him on my podcast. We had an interview just like this. He thought I was cute, good, you know, like in terms of you're doing a great job, he had the same impression of me, right?

Starting point is 00:25:55 It's the same situation. And then the interview ended, and I just kept sending him stuff. I would send him, hey, I figured out how to grow on cast box, blah, blah, blah, I can get subscribers for 50 cents, how you heard about this, and I would just keep showing him, I'm doing all these experiments trying to grow my show until one day, he basically asked me, he said, haul up, my scriptor is sick or whatever, I'm really crappy at writing, I know you're good at this kind of stuff, can you write my ads for me? I didn't say how much. I was like, yeah, send it to me. I'll do it right now, you know? So he sends to me. I did it for him. He was happy

Starting point is 00:26:29 with it. And then I was like, hey, can we have a call? Like, I'd love to just learn. And he's like, of course, I'll teach you whatever you want. And then I literally would have weekly calls where he would teach me everything he knew about growing podcasts. And I would teach him too. Mentor and mentee relationships are both ways, right? So I would teach him a new way to do it. He would teach me how he's always done it. And so suddenly I had this awesome mentor that was teaching me how to grow my audio podcast. And then now I'm doing the same thing trying to learn from other YouTubers to grow my YouTube. And Jordan's not the right person for that. Who am I going to find to help me grow my YouTube? You know? So it just depends on your goals. And I think the

Starting point is 00:27:08 big lessons in all of that is just help other people. If you want somebody's help, help them. and they'll in return want to help you. It's the law of reciprocity. When I think about getting things from other people, the most important thing is how can I provide value to them? And where that's hard with young people is we haven't gained as much experience to provide value. So people don't really know where to start. But I do think it takes a level of introspection to realize where are my natural talents

Starting point is 00:27:40 and where can I help people with their talents that there might be, lacking in that exact area because we do have natural talents. I think going back to the school system, one of the things that is difficult about it is we don't really capitalize on what we're naturally gifted at. We try to build everyone up to be equal, rounded out. I think what I've realized with this podcast is it gives me a lane to grow in the places that I'm excited to grow, to grow in the places that I'm naturally gifted at. And I think that's what a lot of young people people should be doing, finding what they're naturally good at and focusing on that instead of trying to round out. What do you think about that? I totally agree. And I'm sure you've gotten better.

Starting point is 00:28:24 When you started this podcast two years ago, were you as good as you are today? Absolutely not. Yeah. But you stayed consistent. You put in your reps. You tried hard. And now you've got a top 100 podcaster on your show who's impressed with you. And it's like, okay, this is somebody who I would support. Meanwhile, to be honest, I've been on other shows where they're double your age and I'm not impressed at all. So it has nothing to do with age. It's the effort and the consistency and the passion and the time and the commitment, which all shows in the product. So when you're trying to get a mentor, you also need to do your own work. For example, Gary Vee's not going to mentor me. I haven't achieved what I need to achieve for Gary Vee to want to mentor me.

Starting point is 00:29:13 You know what I mean? I need to keep building before I can get a mentor like Gary V. However, there's somebody who's between me and Gary Vee who would mentor me because I've achieved a level where they would want to take me under their wing. You know what I'm saying? So you also need to do the work to be worthy of being somebody's mentee as well. I do think that at some point the word worth and worthy can be a little tricky Because one of the big things that I've noticed, and the reason I started this podcast is people like us, very ambitious people, feel some sort of delta between where they are and where they want to be that creates dissatisfaction in their life.

Starting point is 00:29:51 They feel like they're not worthy of joy or gratitude because they haven't achieved the external version of themselves that they want to achieve. So I came up with this concept of the duality of gratitude and ambition where you're grateful for where you are right now. now while still wanting to achieve more. It's pretty similar to manifestation as I've learned more about that from guests I've had on the podcast and books. But I guess in your life, how have you felt that? Have you felt at moments you've been so ambitious that you've lost joy for right now? And then have you been able to come back to something that you're grateful for right now that's pushing you toward growth in the future? Yeah. A lot of this reminds me, have you ever heard of Benjamin Hardy's gap in the gain theory? I have, yeah. Yeah. So he talks about how a lot of people

Starting point is 00:30:45 will compare themselves, especially when they're high achievers, right? You always have the next goal post, the next goal post, the next goal post, and you're always comparing yourself from where you are now to where you want to be. But he says you need to actually compare yourself to where you came from, so where you started to where you are now and be more grateful. So when you're thinking about how far you've come along, you're gain thinking. And when you're thinking about the other person that you're not at their level yet, you're in a gap mindset. So you always want to be in a gain mindset where you're really just judging yourself based on where you've already gone and appreciating the fact that you've gotten to where you've gone. Of course I get into moments where I'm like,

Starting point is 00:31:28 man, that person started their podcast a year ago and they already blew up or, oh, this person's beating me on the charts, or how do I not have 100 million downloads yet? Or, whatever it is. Of course, there's moments where I feel that way. But I do, to your point, make sure that I always feel gratitude for like, I think about the things that really matter. Like, I've never missed an episode in seven years. I put out a new episode every single week, sometimes two episodes, a lot of the times two episodes, every single week for over seven years, nearly eight years. I have a team of 60 people all over the world and I'm feeding their families. So there's things that I can think about, like, what are all the things that I feel like

Starting point is 00:32:09 is actually matters? And the other things are vanity metrics, because I always just try to remind myself, even if I accomplish nothing more, I'm already proud of what I've accomplished and everything else is just gravy, right? So it is very important to be grateful and I do try to practice that. So if everything else is just gravy, what's driving you to continue to grow and and continue to get better. I would say back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of just wanting to inspire entrepreneurs, in terms of wanting to continue my father's legacy.

Starting point is 00:32:44 And then honestly, I'm just obsessed with podcasting. Yeah. It's just fun. I feel that. I'm not even doing it for the money anymore. It's fun. It's fun to grow my network. It's fun to put out offers.

Starting point is 00:32:55 It's fun to launch courses. It's fun to host webinars. It's fun to have fans. It's fun. Like, I'm having a lot of, lot of fun. And if my company becomes a $100 million company or a $30 million company every year, it doesn't matter to me. It's the impact that I'm making. It's growing my team bigger. It's reaching more people. And to me, what drives me, honestly, is that I love my job. I just have so much

Starting point is 00:33:20 fun doing it. And I love the feedback of helping other people and people learning from me, to be honest. So that's what drives me is just helping other people. Yeah. And I think that definitely comes out in your content. And it's one reason that you have so many people that resonate so deeply. Looking through your comment sections on episodes I watch preparing for this, there are so many people that just love your energy. And that's one of the things they comment on a lot. I love Holla's energy. I love her vibe. And I think that is just the genuineness that people feel when watching it, that you're doing it because you're having fun, because you love it. And that's one of the most important things we can cultivate. Because a lot of people,

Starting point is 00:34:02 both of us know this, a lot of people getting into this game are doing it for the money. One of your posts that, it was one of the first of your posts I ever saw, I think. I just started posting on LinkedIn. And you wrote about how everyone's using AI on LinkedIn. It was fascinating to me. I had been using AI to write my LinkedIn posts up to that point. And I haven't since because it really reframed the values that we have and where we're creating content from, what place we're creating that content from. How do you continue to have

Starting point is 00:34:37 this mindset of fun, this mindset of helping other people when you probably have so many opportunities to sell out or to do it for other reasons? Well, I think in terms of selling out for money or things like that, I think once you've achieved a certain level of income, a certain point money is money. I have a nice car. I have all clothes I could want. So it's like, what is going to fulfill me? And what fulfills me now is experimenting, is figuring out how to grow my YouTube, is just finding joy in learning new skills and accomplishing a goal, you know, and checking it off the list. That still drives me. I'm a very ambitious person, you know. And I want to touch on the AI stuff that you were talking about because it's really interesting.

Starting point is 00:35:28 That post specifically was about AI comments on LinkedIn. And so I've been an influencer on LinkedIn for like seven years now. I started posting on LinkedIn when I launched my podcast. And I loved LinkedIn so much because it was a real community. People used to write paragraphs of comments. I used to have long conversations in the DMs. Everything was real. And I really loved the fact that LinkedIn was a real community where other platforms like

Starting point is 00:35:55 Instagram and stuff has a lot of bots and fake clients. comments and so on. But LinkedIn was a real community. But now everyone's using AI to like auto generate all their comments. And so when I post, I get all these likes and comments, but I'm like, is this even real? Are these even real people? It feels so fake. And it's really sad because it's real profiles. And they're just hooking up their stuff to AI. And I'm like, well, what is the point of all this? Our AIs are just talking to our AI and like, who's going to getting value, if that's the case, right? So I think there needs to be some sort of reform on social media where, like, LinkedIn specifically has to shut all that down because I don't think it's

Starting point is 00:36:39 bad to co-create with AI and write content. That's the future. You've got to co-create with AI. But to auto comment, it's like, what is the point of that? That's a whole other level. And the thing about podcasting is really cool is at least for now, there's no AI, hour-long deepfakes, people having conversations. I don't see that being a place that's really going to get popular, right? And so podcasting, you're talking about how the creator economy is going to 13x the next two years, I think you said? 17x. Podcasting, it's not as big, but I think it's predicted to 11x in the next 10 years, which is still like, that's still pretty big. It's because it's not really an industry that we can replicate, that we can fake with AI. And I think that's

Starting point is 00:37:28 think that genuineness and that creativity that a lot of this conversation has come down to is really the human trait that we crave more of. I think it all ties back to what we were talking about, creating a personal brand. Nowadays, the lines between podcaster and creator is blurrier and blurrier. When people say they listen to my podcast, they'll be like, oh, where do you listen? They'll be like, Instagram. And I'm like, okay. You know, like, so like podcast doesn't mean audio only.

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Starting point is 00:42:34 or you used to be very big into the law of attraction and manifestation, and you had some different points with that in your life. But I'm wondering how that's influenced this part of your life since you've started your business. And where it is now that, a lot of your goals that you originally had are achieved and how that has evolved in your life. This is a good question.

Starting point is 00:42:58 So law of attraction to me is something that I was really into when I was like 19 years old. And I remember up until that point, I was like a very average girl. Average in school, average in everything other than like I was a really good singer. So like I was above average in singing and average and everything else. But I basically got obsessed with the law of attraction. And I would tell myself, I'm so confident, I'm so pretty, everybody loves me. And then I remember getting like an amazing job at Hot 97. I started hanging out with celebrities, dating celebrities, got big on Twitter.

Starting point is 00:43:33 All these things started happening because I grew such extreme confidence in myself. And over the years, that has wavered and unwavered. But my positivity and my belief that the world is abundant and I can achieve my dreams has never went away. I'm really quick to just take action and start something. And I have like zero hesitation about if it's going to work, if it's not going to work. And I have so many examples of this. And there's been so many times where I've spoken something into existence.

Starting point is 00:44:07 And then it's just organically happened. So for example, when I started my podcast seven years ago, people used to ask me because I had a great corporate job, whatever, be like, why are you doing this? This is before podcasting is what it is now. People didn't understand what is even a podcast. Like, why are you doing this, right? And I'd be like, I'm going to have the number one podcast network in the world, is what I would say. I didn't even know what a podcast network was.

Starting point is 00:44:34 I didn't even know podcast networks are supposed to grow and monetize podcasts. Like, I literally had no idea what I was saying. I had no idea what it meant. Five years later, I have a top self-improvement podcast network. I grow and monetize all the people I used to look up to are in my podcast network. And that just happened organically. I didn't even try. I know that sounds crazy, but it just happened.

Starting point is 00:45:01 It just happened. And one day, it was like 22, I had COVID, and it was Christmas break. And I remember I couldn't see anybody on Christmas because I had COVID. And back to like this COVID starting all my businesses. Again. And I remember having this idea, I'm going to start the Yap Media. I called it the Yap Media Collective. I was like, I'm going to recruit all these podcasters and start getting the ads or whatever.

Starting point is 00:45:28 And then that was the precursor of my network. And then suddenly I had the Yap Media Network and I just built it brick by brick until I had one. And so it's just little things like that, like speaking things into an existence and then taking action and following your gut. Basically, I feel like I get downloads from the universe. And what I try to do is I try to follow my gut instinct, especially when it comes to business. Because I feel like almost everything I've ever done is I just had the idea. I thought it through.

Starting point is 00:46:00 It's not like I just have an idea and I just don't even think it through. But I have an idea and I just execute. I don't overthink. I just start doing. And that could be as simple as putting a PowerPoint together about it. or sending out a bunch of emails or whatever I need to do to kickstart whatever I want to do.

Starting point is 00:46:18 So now I've got this new download that I need to basically transition my podcast network into a simulcast network. We already sell video ads and things like this, but a lot of the podcasters that I represent are really big on audio

Starting point is 00:46:32 and they don't know how to do their video. So I'm going to take everything that I've learned from myself, growing my YouTube, and I'm going to just do it for them. I'm not going to charge them or anything. I'm just going to literally grow their YouTube channels. and double the size of my network.

Starting point is 00:46:45 And so that's the thing that I'm focusing on now. And like I often get these ideas and I just go for it. So I feel like law of attraction is, and I remember I think David Meltzer taught me this, it's the law of goya, get off your ass. You know, it's like you've got to pair law of attraction and manifesting, which is essentially just saying your goals out loud

Starting point is 00:47:07 so you believe them, right? That's what I believe law of attraction is. It's saying your goals out loud so you yourself believe it and then doing something about it. So that's what I believe. That's awesome that David taught you that. I actually had him as a guest on my show a month and a half ago. Oh, I love that. He's an amazing person. Yeah. Just the belief that you can achieve what you say you will. And looking at your story, it seems like you really had that instilled in you from a young age. Your dad achieved the so-called unachievable. And so it seems like he raised

Starting point is 00:47:40 kids with a mindset of you can do whatever. And you really did believe that. I've been lucky enough where my parents, I think I've definitely felt that not as much in a monetary sense, but in a internal joy sense, where I've always felt entitled to being grateful for what I have and to being joyful no matter my external circumstances. And I think being raised in that mindset is probably,

Starting point is 00:48:10 the most powerful thing you can have for your life. Totally, because what's the opposite of that? Being a victim, right? So if you always walk around life, feeling like a victim, playing the victim, you're just playing as small as you possibly can. Nothing is going to come to you because you're closed off from all the goodness in the world because your energy is a victim. And that's playing as small as you can.

Starting point is 00:48:35 Yeah, 100%. So, Hala, I'm so grateful for. the interview that we've had today, the time today. I know I've learned a ton. I hope the people listening and watching have learned a ton. Where can my audience find you? Thank you, Jack. If you guys want to tune in to Young Improfiting Podcasts, it is for entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs. I've interviewed some of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world from Alex Ramozy to Damon John to Gary Vee and Grant Cardone. So if you want some entrepreneurship content, go check that out. Awesome. I'll link it down below. Thank you so much, Hala.

Starting point is 00:49:12 Thank you so much. Yeah, fam, I had such a great time being on the Grateful Podcast. Jack is an incredible interviewer and it just made me so happy to see a young podcaster who's doing so well and doing such a great job and trying so hard. I really think he's going to be successful. So shout out to Jack. I really appreciated that he gave me the space to dig into a chapter of my life that I don't really talk about too much, but it was really the chapter of my life that triggered everything that I have today. And if there's one message I hope you take from this episode, it's that your lowest moment does not define you. It can be the very thing that pushes you to level

Starting point is 00:49:50 up. Losing my dad during COVID was the most painful experience of my life, but it forced me to stop playing small and finally build the career and freedom that I had dreamed of my whole life. That season became the spark that led to Yap Media and the life that I'm living today. And another powerful reminder is the importance of building your personal brand. The world is changing fast and AI is shifting the job market faster than any of us expected. What will always protect you is your voice, your skills, and your ability to attract an audience. Pick one platform and get consistent. Learn the algorithms and let your content become your competitive edge.

Starting point is 00:50:27 And finally, never underestimate the value of mentorship through service. Find ways to actively provide value to the people you want to learn from before you even ask them for anything. Do the work to be worthy of their attention and guidance, because mentorship should always be a two-way street. So that's it for this episode, Yap, fam. Thank you so much for all your support over the past seven years. We are now entering on eight years of Yap, and I truly meet it when I say young and profiting would not be what it is today without all of my incredible listeners. You all are the reason I get to keep showing up, growing this platform, and doing what I love. And I hope to keep doing this for many.

Starting point is 00:51:06 more years to come. I hope you enjoyed this seven years of Yap series. I basically went on seven different podcasts to show my support to other podcasters in celebration of seven years of Yap. Jack did such a great job and I wanted to make sure we replayed it on the podcast. Check out his show, the grateful podcast and subscribe to that. And while you're at it, make sure you drop us a comment or review on Apple, Spotify, CastBox, YouTube, wherever you listen to the show. I love reading your reviews. They mean the world to us. And as always, you can connect with me on social media. You can follow me on Instagram at Yapwith Hala or LinkedIn. Just search for my name. It's Halitaha. This is your host, Halitaha, aka the podcast Princess, signing off.

Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: How Life’s Hardest Moments Can Spark Business Breakthroughs | Entrepreneurship | 7 Years of YAP

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