Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: Leveraging LinkedIn for Career and Business Success | How to Money

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

By the time Hala Taha left her corporate job, her side hustle was making well over $100,000 monthly. Dubbed the ‘Podcast Princess’, her social media and podcast empire is on track to make $10 million next year. What does she attribute her rapid growth to? LinkedIn. In this episode of the How to Money Podcast, Hala talks to Joel Larsgaard and Matt Altmix about leveraging LinkedIn to grow her business. She also shares her top tips for growing on the platform. Joel Larsgaard is a former senior radio producer on the nationally syndicated Clark Howard Show. In pursuit of his dream to achieve financial freedom, he started working young and now manages a modest real estate portfolio. Matt Altmix is a former wedding photographer and business owner. Before switching to photography, he worked in the advertising space as a designer. Matt also manages several investment properties.   In this episode, Hala, Joel, and Matt will discuss: - What Hala likes to splurge on - Her early career in radio - Why she decided to focus on LinkedIn - Smart keyword usage on LinkedIn - Hala’s favorite lessons from her dad - Features to focus on for LinkedIn growth - The ‘broetry’ style of writing LinkedIn posts - The LinkedIn strategies that grew Hala’s podcast  - How she dropped out of school to work for free - The strategy that blew up her podcast audience - Hala’s journey from corporate to entrepreneurship - Running her business on a team of volunteering super fans - And other topics…   Joel Larsgaard is a former senior radio producer on the nationally syndicated Clark Howard Show. He started working young, first mowing lawns, then doing a three-hour shift at the Chick-fil-A across from his high school. He made only $24,000 a year at his first job in radio but saved up 20% to put down on his first house. In pursuit of his dream of achieving financial freedom, he became a part-time landlord with a modest real estate portfolio of seven properties in Atlanta. Matt Altmix is a former wedding photographer turned full-time podcast host. Before switching to photography, he worked in the advertising space as a designer. While in school, he and his wife shared dreams of starting their own businesses. After they got married, they started Altmix Photography, running it together until Matt decided to focus on podcasting full-time. Matt also manages several investment properties.    Connect with Joel & Matt: Joel’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/HowToMoneyJoel  Joel’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-larsgaard-70175566/  Matt’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/HowToMoneyMatt  Matt’s LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-altmix-989161a/  How to Money Website: https://www.howtomoney.com/  How to Money Twitter: https://twitter.com/HowToMoneyPod  How to Money Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/howtomoneypod/  How to Money Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1623670287732189  How to Money Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-money/id1337718773  LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course.    Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting Kajabi - Get a free 30-day trial to start your business at Kajabi.com/PROFITING LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at LinkedIn.com/YAP Yahoo Finance - For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit YahooFinance.com    More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting   Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala   Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/

Today's episode is sponsored in part by Kajabi, LinkedIn, Yahoo Finance, Indeed, and Shopify. Kajabi gives you control of your content, brand, and income. Get a 30-day free trial to start your course at kajabi.com slash profiting. Reach top-level decision makers by advertising on LinkedIn. Go to linkedin.com slash yap for a $100 credit on your next campaign. Yahoo Finance is the number one financial destination. For comprehensive financial news and analysis, visit the brand behind every great investor, yahoofinance.com.

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What's up, young improvitors? Welcome back to the show. And today we are replaying my guest appearance on the How To Money podcast, which is hosted by Joel Landsgaard and Matt Altmix. They're two best friends who love to talk about personal finance over a good craft beer. They're really fun and we had a fun conversation. And I actually interviewed Joel and Matt on my podcast in episode 282, where we talked about spending triggers,

impulse buying, and personal finance hacks for millennials. So if you want a fun and easy way to digest your personal finance content, go check out episode number 282. So I decided to replay my episode on the How to Money podcast because Joel and Matt did a great job asking me about my podcast journey and how LinkedIn changed my life. If you're new to the app, you probably don't know that I teach the number one

LinkedIn master class, but I decided that I'm going to take a break from teaching the course this summer. I'm going to wait until September to launch the next one. So we've got quite a while till I'm going to be formally teaching another LinkedIn class. But I'm always going on podcasts and talking about LinkedIn. I went on Amy Porterfield's online marketing made easy, Jenna Kutcher's Gold Digger podcast. I went on the How to Money podcast that we're replaying today.

I'm always giving free tips on LinkedIn on other people's podcasts and everybody asks me different things so you can get a lot of free content and training that way. So like I mentioned, Joel and Matt did a great job. They asked me about what kind of posts do well on the platform, why we should bother with LinkedIn at all. And I thought it'd be a good one to replay to hold you guys over until September. So if you're interested

in LinkedIn, this episode is definitely for you. Without further delay, here's my interview on LinkedIn with the How To Moneyboys. The first question we got to ask everybody who comes on the podcast is what do they like to splurge on? Because Matt and I, we splurge on craft beer, we're drinking a good one right now, and sometimes craft beer costs a pretty penny. What's the thing that you spend more money than some people think is sane on

while you're doing the right thing and you're saving and investing for your future? It's definitely splurging on beauty expenses. I am dropping a lot of cash at Sephora every single month. I am getting facials, I'm getting my eyelashes done every week, my nails done. And honestly, part of my brand is to look young and I feel my most confident when I feel my most beautiful

and I feel like it just helps me be a better, more productive person when I take care of myself. So that also includes a gym membership I pay for. Yeah, just taking care of myself. Oh, love it. Okay, so does that, that technically means that these are business expenses, right? I do get to expense some,

some of it's going on my business card for sure. Yeah, it doesn't mean it's free, right? But it is at least helpful so that you're not like, yeah, you save some taxation on that stuff. I love it. Okay, Hala, so you said that you've had an entrepreneurial spirit ever since you were a little kid. I think since you were four years old.

Where did that come from? And I mean, I guess specifically, I wanna know if it was nurture, if it was a part of your family culture, or if it was more just sort of nature, if it's just who you are. I think it was certainly nature. I mean I came from a family of doctors primarily and a family of immigrants where they really thought that the only path to success was to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, go to college and get a degree, take a test, and then like go on this like set track.

And in fact, I was like the black sheep of my family because I was not going on that track. And I'm literally the only one out of my four siblings who did not become a doctor. And I had cousins who lived down the street, three of them who were basically like my siblings, they all became doctors. So literally the only one in my immediate family out of the quote unquote kids that didn't become a doctor. You're not alone in that, right?

There's a lot of immigrants who have a similar sort of story. We brought Jaspreet Singh on the podcast a long time ago, Matt, from Minority Mindset. He said the same thing. Like he's been an incredible success. And yet, you know yet his parents were like, you're not a doctor or a lawyer, so it doesn't matter. So how has your family responded, Hala, to you?

He said you're the black sheep, but seeing all the success you've had and the ways you've been able to kind of, I don't know, create a pretty, almost like an immediate empire, how does your family think about you now that you're not a doctor or a lawyer but you're still successful?

No, they're asking me, can we sleep on your couch? You know, so no, I'm like by far the most successful one in my family now. So, um, it all worked out, but it did take, it was really hard in those years when nobody believed in me, you know, there was probably like five, six years where everybody, even though I was doing such cool things on the internet, nobody understood it. And I was really looked down and like I would go to the Thanksgiving and I feel like people were really condescending to me and didn't understand what I did. And it was really only until like, I really just had something to show for myself that they

started being proud of me and like accepting what I was doing. Why did you keep doing it? And was there any point you wanted to quit when you were kind of confronted with other people's disbelief along the way? Especially your family. I did quit. I actually started my career on this journey in broadcasting when I was 19 years old. I quit college to take an internship at Hot 97

and become Angie Martinez's assistant for three years and I didn't get paid a cent. I made money like hosting hip hop showcases at night and I'd have all these like outside online radio shows on the side to like hone my broadcasting chops. And then I started a blog for three years that became super popular and I almost got a show on MTV and that didn't work out. And so I had a bunch of failures in a row, not getting a job at radio that I worked really hard for and worked for free for three years and then ended up getting fired from my internship. Then I,

you know, almost got a show on MTV with this blog that I basically again worked for free for three years, just building this brand hosting parties and doing all these like odd jobs to make it work. And then MTV dropped me and then I did quit. I literally was like, okay, I gotta be a normal person. I gotta go maybe get my MBA, do something different and just get a regular job.

And for four years before I started Young and Profiting Podcast, I literally just had a normal corporate job and I thought I'd never get back on the mic. You seem to have like a drive. Like you're tenacious and like honestly I'm curious to hear your take specifically on immigrants and specifically I guess second generation immigrants in America.

It seems like that they embrace and live out the American dream. I think more than almost any other segment in society. Do you think that's the case? And yeah, like I find purpose in work and I do find a lot of people who are like American American, they don't, they have more of a sense of entitlement about their work.

And for me, I'm Palestinian American, so really crazy time to be 100% Palestinian. So it's been a crazy time, but my dad basically grew up in poverty, grew up in a war, ended up becoming a doctor, ended up becoming a surgeon in America, opened up a medical center, and he had like enormous drive

and literally came from nothing. Had no electricity, had no running water, like literally came from nothing. So for me, it's just like, I wasn't really spoiled growing up because my parents came from nothing so So for me, it's just like, you know, I wasn't really spoiled growing up because my parents came from nothing. So they didn't understand like luxury and like that, and they donated a lot of their money.

So like, I wasn't spoiled at all, even though we did re my family did really well, but I saw like that anything was possible that you could literally create a lot from nothing. And for me, it's just like, well, I basically had a silver spoon in my mouth and what's my excuse? So how, how am I going to make a big impact? And really what drives me is that there's really not a lot of other girls that look like me that are in my position. So now what drives

me now is the fact that all these Brown girls keep messaging me like, Oh, like because of you, I feel like I can be an entrepreneur because of you, you've inspired me. And I need to fill that gap because there's maybe there's like five other women that I can think of that are in my position right now as a brown person woman in America. You mentioned your dad. It certainly sounds like he's had an impact on you too. And is that maybe where you think your work ethic came from

and your dedication is seeing him come from nothing. We talk about like self-made in America. Like there's the myth of the self-made man or something like that. And it's a lot easier to become quote unquote self-made starting out on kind of the third base of being in a really rich culture like we live in versus actually kind of self-made man like it sounds like your dad was coming, rising out of nothing. Yeah, what sort of influence did he have on you? Oh, he was the best.

So my dad actually passed away during COVID. And that was so tough on me because he was just like the best human in the world. And I think what my dad taught me was generosity because he got so successful and he never stopped shopping at Sears. He was just really humble and he really made it his life's purpose

to help everybody around him. So he cared more about his employees getting paid. I remember if I had a friend that wasn't doing well, he used to give my friends money when we'd go to the mall and not even tell me. And they told me years later, hey, your dad used to give me money when we went to the mall and not even tell me. And they told me years later, like, hey, your dad used to give me money when we went to the mall.

Like, you know? And like, he was just like such a nice, generous guy. He put all my nieces and nephews through college and Palestine and like pulled my whole family out of poverty. So he taught me generosity. And even now, like I'm just like such a generous person, like anybody who knows me personally, like I'm always trying to help my employees.

Like my goal of building my company as big as possible is actually not, I don't really care about money. Like in fact, I invest almost everything I make back into my company because I just want to make an impact. I just want to help people. I want to inspire people to live their most fulfilled, purposeful lives. And we need powerful people who have money to help improve our world.

And like, that's my drive is like, I just want to make the world a better place. Okay, so you quickly ran through your early career and you kind of went through like the blog and then possibly the reality show taking off. But your podcast, it seemed like that basically started out as a side hustle. I think at the time you were working in marketing at Disney.

I guess what was the spark that made you want to actually start your own thing? Your podcast, it seemed like that basically started out as a side hustle. I think at the time you were working in marketing at Disney. I guess what was the spark that made you want to actually start your own thing? Was it that desire to have an impact on the world or were you fed up with more the corporate nine to five type of job? Honestly, everything that I've ever done that amounted to anything was always like revenge.

So it's like I was working at Hewlett Packard and I was doing great. And I actually thought that I was gonna be so far behind in corporate because when I started my corporate career, I was already like 28 years old and I literally had never had a real job. My resume looked crazy.

Like I was interning at a radio station and I was blogging for a hip hop website called the sorority of hip hop. Like I had the craziest resume, but I was actuallyning at a radio station and I was blogging for a hip hop website called the Sorority of Hip Hop. Like I had the craziest resume, but I was actually so talented. I was so tech savvy. I could hack any social platform. I could video edit.

I had all these skills that I had acquired. You had to be a jack of all trades to really like, you know, get all those things off the ground. Exactly. So it's like, I knew how to do so many things. So actually when I got into corporate, I was like skipping over people twice my age.

And my last job at Hewlett Packard, which was my first job, I was like the C-Sweets pet, like doing all the QBRs and like really rose up the ranks. And at the same time, I was the same person. I was the same Hala interviewing the CEO and CMO at the town hall and getting flown to all the events and on the mic.

I was still like on the mic all the time, but just in my marketing corporate role. And I actually became like the face of the young employees at Hewlett Packard. And I was a president of this thing called the young employee network. And I did that for two years. And it was basically like a side hustle within my main job that I worked super hard on. And then I wanted to be the global young employee president and I was on the global board and I had all the credentials.

And then this lady who didn't like me gave it to somebody who literally had never been a part of the organization and they didn't even keep me on the board. And I was just like mortified because I was like, I just literally spent three years volunteering to become the president and everybody thought I was gonna mortified because I was like, I just literally spent three years volunteering to become the president and everybody thought I was gonna be the president. And then I realized I was like, man, I did it again.

Like I did it at Hot 97, work for free, not my own brand. I did it at, you know, Strawberry One was mine, but like whatever. And then this thing, I was working for free and it didn't work out. And it was a gatekeeper that told me no. And I was like, I'm not doing this anymore. If I'm gonna build something from now on,

it's gonna be for myself. And so I decided I was gonna start this podcast. If I couldn't lead the 7,000 young employees at Hewlett Packard, then I'd go lead all the professionals, young professionals on LinkedIn. Hey, there's millions there. Yeah, and so I was like, all right, I'll just do the same thing I'm doing here,

helping all these young people. Now I'll just do it for the public and make my own thing. So young and profiting was probably inspired by the Young Employee Network, looking back. And I started this podcast and I started posting on LinkedIn and then I became really quickly an influencer on LinkedIn and then shortly after my podcast started getting some traction.

We have a lot of questions about LinkedIn that we're going to get to in a little bit, but how long before you ended up making money and it's like talking, hearing your story a lot of years, you're working your butt off. You're not really making much, if anything. How long would you tell someone to keep at it before they decide to throw in the towel? When do you know that your idea is a failure or how do you know if it just needs more time? It's so, this is such a great question because I feel like I'm so happy I quit so many things when I decided to quit.

Like I had to quit my job at one point to take my podcast to the next level. I had to actually shut down my blog in order to take on my corporate career. So I've had lots of points in my life where I had to quit and it made a lot of people upset. But you've got to look at yourself, right? And what's the best thing for yourself and your future. So for example, with this blog, we were doing it for three years. We hadn't really figured out how to monetize the blog

that well, we were hosting parties, but it was like three years of like scraping by. And I was like, I just can't see us getting out of this. Like the only thing we had was this TV show that could have given us some notoriety. Then we didn't get that. And I was like, you know what, screw it. I could keep at this for another three years or I can, you know, for me, I had to find a way to sustain myself and that was corporate.

That was an easy, like, okay, I I'm gonna get a nine to five job. It's not exactly what I want, but this is what I need. I need to be able to afford my rent, afford my car, and build some wealth because I did experiment for a while and it was great and fun, but it wasn't sustainable. And so I actually had to do something I did not want to do in order to build a foundation. And then when I worked into corporate, I quickly got to six figures like so quickly. And then I had a foundation finally. And that's when I started my side hustle. And actually I was very scarred for having a failed entrepreneurship experience

early on that it took me a really long time to actually quit my job and become an entrepreneur. Even though I was making like so much money and having so much entrepreneurship experience early on, that it took me a really long time to actually quit my job and become an entrepreneur, even though I was making like so much money and having so much success, I was scared to quit my job. Yeah, those were overlapping for a decent chunk of time, right? It was, yeah. Okay, so what was it then that allowed you to quit?

Like, was it a certain dollar amount? Was it a psychological state that you arrived in? Like, when did you decide to take the leap and transition to, yeah, full time? Because it even sounds like you had a massive business with like, I think I read it right, you had over 30 employees by the time you quit? Oh my gosh.

I really waited a long time. My second client was paying us $30,000 a month. That was my second client. And then I got like two other clients that size. So by the time I quit Disney, I had 30 employees around the world and we were making well over a hundred thousand dollars a month in the side hustle. That's a nice side.

I wasn't even monetizing my podcast yet. I was just all the podcast guests that would come on my show, they kept asking me for services. And then I just, I had a volunteer team, so I offered them, I turned my volunteer team. This is actually pretty interesting, so I'll step back. When I started my podcast six years ago, I started on LinkedIn. And I used to have super fans that would reach out to me and they'd be like,

Holly, you changed my life. Like, I've never heard, like, I never, like, even listened to podcasts before. And now I've done X, Y, and Z. Like, how can I help you? How can I make this bigger? I want to learn from you. And again, I was this Jack of all trades. I could write, I could hack social media, I could create websites, graphic design, video editing. I knew how to do all the steps. And so I would just like start teaching people. How did I, I would just,

I just started recruiting these volunteers and interns actually fans who would reach out to me and I put them in a Slack channel. And for two years, this is how I was able to have a really big podcast for two years while working a very serious corporate job is because I had 20 volunteers who worked for free for me for two years. Super fans. Super fans.

And they just wanted to learn from me. And then once COVID hit and I found myself with a little bit more time, I started to just pay attention to what everybody was asking me, because I started to not feel happy at Disney. I felt like HP saw me growing up, and I was like a rock star at HP and really respected. When I went to Disney, I was treated like an intern,

and I just felt like I didn't have any respect. I felt like I was starting from scratch again, and I was like, you know what? I need to just go out on my own, because knew my own worth and Disney does not value me. And so I started paying attention to what my audience was asking me. And it was the guests who came on my show at the end of the every almost every time they'd be like, how did you grow your LinkedIn? How'd you grow your podcast? Can you do this for me?

And then finally, one day, Heather Monahan, who was my first client and still my client, she's a huge LinkedIn influencer, she wouldn't leave me alone. She was like, your videos are so awesome. Like you have to do my videos. And then I told her like, hey, like I don't have time. You know, I've got this like really stressful job, but I can train you on the week.

I told her I'll train her on the weekends. And so we started having these like Saturday sessions where I was trying to teach her how to video edit. And she's like, Hala, like, I'm not gonna learn how to do this. She's like, I just had a call with Gary V's team, VaynerMedia, I can pay them or I can pay you. Like you've got a company, you just showed me your Slack,

you have the team, like, I don't understand, like I'll be your first client. You don't even like your job at Disney. She was like starting to become my mentor. She was like, just do it. And I was like, okay. So she was my first client and she paid us like nothing. And then like I said, my second client was a billionaire

and I landed like a $30,000 monthly retainer with him for like LinkedIn and podcast production. And then I was able to start hiring my volunteers and paying them and start hiring more people. And then before I knew it, six months later, 30 employees around the world, like super high level clients making over 100K a month, found out I was gonna be on the cover of podcast magazine.

And that's what triggered, I was like, well, I mean, I probably made it if I'm getting on the cover of podcast magazine, I should, I probably made it if I'm getting on the cover of podcast magazine, I should probably quit my job now. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and profitors, they may call me the podcast princess, but I'm also the LinkedIn queen. I've been a LinkedIn influencer for six years now. And I teach one of the most popular courses about LinkedIn. And I love to teach sales on LinkedIn, because when it comes to B2B sales,

LinkedIn has got that on lock. LinkedIn is where all the decision makers are hanging out. There are 180 million senior level decision makers on LinkedIn and 10 million C-suite decision makers. These people are on LinkedIn and they're in the mode to buy. They're using LinkedIn for their buying journey to research vendors or sales reps that they might work with, to look up how to solve their problems, to learn from industry thought leaders. They are in the mode to buy, whereas on other platforms, they're in the mode to be entertained. You want

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Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. That's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash profiting now to grow your business. No matter what stage you're in shopify.com slash profiting. I love it. Your story so inspiring. And I think there's a lot we can learn just from you telling it, but then there's a lot of specifics we need to get into as well. The jack of all trades I referred it. Your story, so inspiring. And I think there's a lot we can learn just from you telling it, but then there's a lot of specifics

we need to get into as well. The jack of all trades I referred to. I'm curious, you quickly glossed over the fact that you went back to get your MBA. So if I heard you right, you dropped out of school to take that initial radio internship, but then somehow you ended up with your MBA. How did all that come together?

I have to say, my college career is a hot mess. So I got to college and I went to a very nerdy tech school and I was like miss popular, but you know, it was a new feeling for me because in high school, like when I was in high school, 9-11 happened and I'm Arabic and it was like really weird. Like the teachers were weird to me. Like I never really got opportunities.

Like I tried out for the cheerleading team. I didn't make it. I tried out for the volleyball team. I didn't make it. I used to be the lead in all my school plays in middle school and in high school, they wouldn't even let me in the talent show. And I literally had the best voice in school,

but my hands down, it was really like a, like they were really racist. Like I was one of the only brown people in school, but hands down, it was really like a, like they were really racist. Like I was one of the only brown people in school was like totally like a really white town. And so when I got to college, I went to a really diverse college and then suddenly it was like an equal playing field. And I just was like overwhelmed with wanting to do every activity. So I was like in a radio club, I was captain of the cheerleading team. I was in my like on the board of my sorority. I did everything but go to class. Literally did not go to class.

I never went to class and I did really well working, but I wasn't good at being a student. I was like obsessed with this job at Haunt 97 and this internship. And I became like super obsessed with it. They asked me to start coming in every day. The way that it works in radio is you basically just pay obsessed with this job at Haunt97 and this internship. And I became like super obsessed with it. They asked me to start coming in every day. The way that it works in radio is you basically

just pay your dues for many years, at least at Haunt97. And it's essentially an illegal internship, right? So they just kept, Angie was like, can you come here every day? And I was like, sure. And then I just dropped out of school. And I was already, I was doing really bad in school anyway. So I felt like, okay, I'm, I'm failing out of school anyway.

I think I had like a two points. I had the worst GPA, like a two point something GPA. Like I was a hot mess, but I was doing amazing at hot 97. And actually I've sang my whole life, like I was saying, so I thought that I was going to be at hot 97 and I was pushing my music. I was singing and songwriting and I was pushing my music on the DJs. And I thought that I was taking that internship

to become a singer and make it. But then I fell in love with broadcasting and I wanted to be like the next Angie Martinez and they had me doing commercials. And then that's how I became like this love of being what I do today, right? You and Joel both with the the love of broadcasts. Yeah, the radio background. I used to fall asleep listening to talk radio, which is the weirdest thing.

Like everyone thinks that I'm psychotic because of that, but I would I would fall asleep listening to boring AM talk radio. I just loved it and I loved that kind of medium of communication, long-form audio. It just has a power to it that television doesn't even have. So yeah, I get it, I get it. And there is a bond, a connection you can have with your audience, I think, when they hear you in their ear holes for like three hours a week,

or a lot of our listeners, it's like one episode out of three or whatever, but however much you listen to, you get to know us because you can't help but get to know that person, which I think is beautiful about audio. And then just like back to your original question, and I'll be really fast, I know this was like a long winded answer,

but I ended up getting fired from Hot 97. So imagine getting fired from a free internship. And I was like the queen of the interns. Please leave. They obviously valued me, but what happened was is that a paid job opened up and I basically texted my friend who got the job and I was supposed to train him,

even though I was working for free. They wanted me to go into work and train the person who they're gonna pay to do the job that I was already doing for free. It's pretty cold here. It's cold. Yeah, and so then I was like, sorry guys, I was like, his name is Druski, sorry Druski, if you wanna learn how to be the producer,

learn it on your own, I'm not going to work. Angie cut off my key cards. She also didn't like, it was really cruel. She didn't let me say bye to anyone. She told everybody they can't talk to me anymore. These were all my best friends, my mentors. I literally dropped out of school for them. And so it was devastating. And I just remember feeling like a part of me died because I had

branded myself as Hala from Hot 97. This is what everybody knew me as. All my social handles were Hala from Hot 97. And it literally felt like somebody died. But then I quickly thought of this other idea to start this blog. And at that point I went back to school and I was a totally different person. I was a completely different person. All of a sudden I was getting straight A's. I graduated my senior year straight A's. Now to get into my MBA, my GPA was still so terrible. I actually had to convince our director of graduate studies

to allow me in the program. I lobbied myself and I would write her emails and then finally she agreed to have coffee with me and then I told her my story and she was impressed and she was like, okay, I'll let you in the program. She's like, especially if you can maintain a 4.0 and I was like, all right, I'll do it. I promise I'll get a 4.0.

I got a 4.0 and I graduated number one in my class and that's how I got into corporate. So. Nice. Okay, this shows so much persistence and hustle and grind. And I guess I'm curious because there's been a lot of kind of poo-pooing on hustle culture, you know, and there to a certain extent,

I totally see where that comes from, that it's possible to overdo it, right? And a lot of people are tired of hearing the hustle culture pitch, but you were grinding in all of these side hustles, you were working without pay, and then you were also, like look what you did to get your MBA, I mean it's so impressive. What's your take on hustle culture?

Is it overdone, is it underdone? Like have we kind of missed the sweet spot? I think there has to be a point in your life where you are hustling. And for me, and even in your twenties, and Gary V says this all the time, like you can hustle and make no money. But for example, like my company's on track to make $10 million next year. And that would not be possible had I not worked for free in my twenties and learned all the skills that I did, had I not worked in the mall and learned all the skills that I did.

Like, so for me, it's like, there's like, you need to hustle because you need to get the skills. And that's the thing that I feel like is missing from all these young people. They're not taking the time to get the skills. They want all the shortcuts, but you build the character and the skills and the expertise through all the grunt work that you do. And so for me, it was like, I'm so thankful for all those experiences, even though they didn't pan out to anything,

because that's how I'm making millions today. It's from all the hard work that I did years ago and didn't get paid for. That makes sense. I hadn't, you know, it's funny because I feel like the hustle culture grinding it out that was, I feel like it really got big five, six, seven years ago and everyone was picking up side gigs. They're side hustling and I feel like it's almost fallen out of favor to a certain extent, because folks are like, who wants to do that? Folks are quiet quitting now. But I hadn't thought about it from the standpoint that you are, which almost is more from like a social, cultural side of things.

Like, and even us, me as an adult, like our patience is not what it used to be. The immediate gratification that we can receive by how responsive an app is on our phone. The ability to post something and immediately see a like, that isn't good for our psyches, right? It erodes our ability to persevere, I think. And I think that's one of the downsides of technology specifically. But I had not thought about side hustling as just a means of formation and the ability for youth especially to,

I guess to be able to learn from that. It's almost like you're a Swiss army knife of a human being too, because it's all these like disparate skills that you pick up along the way and you're like, well this one in and of itself isn't terribly valuable, but when it's combined with these other four things, it makes me like superhuman.

Now I can run a podcast network. I mean, and I think that's what we fail to maybe see in the moment sometimes, is that each one of those skills as we're acquiring them is going to lead to something bigger and brighter, even if it's not like the one thing we're gonna coast on for the rest of our lives.

I will say, so the difference as well between the side gig apps and what it is that Hala is doing is that she's, like Hala, you were pursuing things that were incredibly meaningful to you that would hopefully lead to something bigger. You weren't just trading your time for money. Yeah. And there's so many things that I wanna say.

One thing related to what you guys said is like, this is something that Jason Pfeiffer taught me. And looking back at my story, I always did this. You have an opportunity set A and an opportunity set B in everything that you do. So for example, when I worked at Hewlett Packard, my opportunity set A was the job they paid me for. Opportunity set B was all the other stuff that I was doing.

I was president of the Young Employee Network, planning the holiday party, planning the summer picnic, going to all these other events. When I worked at Hot 97, my opportunity set A was being Angie Martinez's intern. But on the side, I had online radio shows. I was blogging for DJ Enough. I was hosting showcases at night.

So it's like I always looked at like, not only the opportunity that they're paying me for, but what are the opportunities to learn and grow, you know? You probably don't get the opportunity to do some of those radio shows without being the intern, right? Exactly. Like that is the foot in the door to get the extra opportunity. And so yeah, I did an unpaid internship in radio as well.

And some people would say that's unconscionable to make somebody work free. But are you kidding me? Like it gave me the opportunity in so many ways. It gave me the connections and the work experience and it was crucial to who I am now. Let's talk about marketing. Okay, your podcast is great. And the product is of course crucial to success,

but given the amount of noise in the podcasting space, like even a great podcast could wallow in obscurity I think a lot of times these days, just given how many there are. Talk to us about the marketing piece of the puzzle and maybe then how we can extrapolate that to everyone else out there listening who doesn't have a podcast but has something marketable, whether it's themselves or a business they own. Yeah. So really it's all about like creative problem solving, right? When I first started

in podcasts for two years, it was like very slow steady growth because I just kept doing the same thing that everybody else was doing, like trying to rank on Apple. All I cared about was Apple because it had like 70% of the market share, maybe it was 60% of the market share

and that's all I paid attention to. And then I started thinking about like, what are the other ways that I can be a successful podcaster? Like, does being a successful podcaster mean that I have to be the top of the charts on Apple? Or could it mean something else? And then I started realizing, well, there's 70 other apps out there.

There's Spotify, there's Google Play, there's Castbox, there's Player Film, there's all these other apps. What if I reached out to them and see if they wanna collaborate because I had grown a platform on LinkedIn. I had grown an audience on LinkedIn and I thought I can leverage LinkedIn in order to grow my podcast. And that's how you have to think. If you have any sort of business,

you can trade audiences with people. And the key to do that is to have one thing that you can leverage. And this is the mistake that people make. They go omnichannel right away. And they're like, okay, I'm gonna be on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, email list, da da da da. When I first started, all I cared about was LinkedIn.

I didn't even post on Instagram. I was like, I'm gonna be the number one podcaster on LinkedIn. And I figured out how the algorithm worked. I figured out how the features worked. I figured out how to build a community proactively. And then all of a sudden, I figured that out before podcasting even.

And so suddenly I had 60,000 followers. Now I have way more. But back then I had 60,000.. Now I have way more, but back then I had 60,000. That was something that I could now trade. Why'd you choose LinkedIn? Like for anybody who's out there listening and they're saying, I thought LinkedIn for what was like my dad's suit photo.

Old way guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To why LinkedIn? It just seems so the hot places are TikTok and Instagram Tala. Don't you know that? Like why LinkedIn? LinkedIn is so great.

There's 135 million active users on LinkedIn and only 6% of them are original content creators. So there's very little competition. There's lots of eyeballs on LinkedIn. It's also an amazing place to be an entrepreneur because people are primed for sales conversations. It's a professional platform. People are actually using LinkedIn in their research for their buying journeys. And because it's branded as this professional network where people are going to learn and solve their problems, having a sales conversation is really welcomed on that

platform where if you try to have a sales conversation on Instagram, it's a little weird because it's so personal, right? LinkedIn is a professional platform that does have a feed and has a social algorithm just like any other platform. So LinkedIn's absolutely amazing and it changed my life. Like I'm so thankful that I started my journey on LinkedIn. And then the other reason was just pure luck. I was shadow banned on Instagram because I'm Palestinian. They've been shadow banning Palestinians for years.

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and join the creators and entrepreneurs who have made over $7 billion. Fascinating to hear so much adversity that you've faced. I mean, starting in basically high school for you. But I mean, I really do want to hear more about LinkedIn, though. And specifically, it makes so much sense, because it's fertile ground for business transactions to take place. Holly, you're talking about using LinkedIn to actually reach your audience. And for a lot of people, that's the toughest thing.

And it feels like, especially social media, man, if you strike it, if you strike gold, you can hit the algorithm right, and you strike it, if you strike gold, you can hit the algorithm right, and you'll be rewarded and you might help, they might help you find your audience. But you're saying that LinkedIn was the place for that. How, okay, talking to me through some of the nitty gritty, what are you posting, how are you engaging, what does it look like for you

to actually grow your podcast on LinkedIn? In terms of like right now, I mean, my strategies were really different, right? So initially when I was trying to grow my podcast, what I did is I traded my audience. So what I did is I reached out to all the different podcast players out there, all the different, every single tool I use, my hosting provider, my like recording platform, Riverside that we're on right now. I literally reached out to every single podcast brand player or not. and I was like,

hey, I'm the biggest podcaster on LinkedIn. I'd love to write a post about you in exchange for you posting me on your website, featuring me in your app, putting out an email blast for me. That's when my podcast blew up because suddenly I was getting all this exposure outside of LinkedIn and I was trading my audience. So that's the first way that I grew my podcast.

Now, you know, the best way to grow anything, forget about a podcast, let's just talk about any business and anything that anybody has, is to retarget your content, okay? So what does that mean? You put up a post and it's about your podcast or you put up a live stream of your fully edited podcast which is my favorite thing to do on LinkedIn.

Anybody who likes, comments or shares is basically raising their hand and saying like, you've got permission to DM me. I took the first action, I took the first behavior here and you have permission to DM me and no matter what you say you're not gonna be spammy or salesy because I took the first action. So you would say something like,

hey, I noticed that you just engaged on my live stream. If you wanna check out the full episode, here's the link. Would love to hear back from you. Then they write back something positive. Oh, thank you so much. Can you copy and paste that as an Apple podcast review? Really appreciate it. So creating all these drip campaigns are called

where you retarget your posts. So you could do this with anything. If you could put up a poll on LinkedIn and say like, let's say you're a real estate agent. You could say, are you in the market for a new house? Yes or no. Anybody who says yes, you can say, hey, I noticed that you engaged on my poll

that you're looking for a new house. I'd love to help you. Here's a free resource and you can drive them down your funnel. So retargeting your own posts is a really great way to drive sales and momentum. And yeah, like I know everything about LinkedIn, so happy to talk about algorithms, engagement hacks,

wherever you wanna go. I'm curious to know, do you think everybody, regardless of what they do, should everybody have a LinkedIn profile? Cause I'll be honest. And presence, right? I don't, I'm not up there at all. You never even created one?

I think I've created a profile, but I cannot remember the last time I've logged in there. So, go ahead and rig me over the coals. Yeah, I mean, if you're not gonna bother posting or taking care of it, don't bother at all, you know? Like you're not gonna get any traction if you're not going to invest the time. So I would say like until you're ready to start posting at least three times a week, I wouldn't even bother because you're just not going to get any more.

Okay, so you need to post regularly. What else do you need to do to drive engagement if you're looking to kind of, yeah, grow your presence, grow your reach there? Okay, so a couple things. Let's talk about utilizing the features. So every social media platform has different features that they're prioritizing, okay? So on LinkedIn, it's actually not a video first platform. It's not trying to compete with Instagram and TikTok. And so video content actually performs

pretty poorly on that platform. So the assets that do perform well are typically pictures with like some sort of story that goes along with it. A quote card that's like a really easy to read skimmable quote, okay? Live streams work well on LinkedIn, polls, okay? So it's understanding the features that work for every single platform, that's super key.

The other thing to think about is people are on their phone. Okay, so when it comes to your assets, video or graphic, you wanna make them vertical and take up as much real estate as possible so that when people are scrolling in their feed, they're scrolling through about nine posts that you're actually taking up a lot of real estate on the feed.

You're gonna crowd everybody else out. Exactly, so it's gonna draw more attention, people have more to look at, you actually get ranked based on how much time people spend on your posts, so it's like they have more to look at. So it's really important to do that. The other thing is being skimmable, okay? If you look on LinkedIn,

you'll see a lot of the influencers are doing this line by line copywriting. It's called broetry. And that's actually on purpose. LinkedIn's algorithm is actually scanning for formatting. And if you have big chunky paragraphs that are really hard to read, nobody wants to do work on social media. That's like being the boring person who's lecturing at a party, right?

So being skimmable right is really important And the last tip that I'll give is that keywords are becoming increasingly important So LinkedIn's moving away from just basing things on engagement so in the past, anything motivational, inspirational would go like skyrocket on LinkedIn. Like you could be like, you know, sky's the limit and get a million likes, you know? Like it was just like anything motivational did amazing.

Right? And now it's all about experts and interest relevancy. So they're basically doing a lot of keyword matching. So you've got to have- So it's more SEO like. It's more SEO. It's like LinkedIn is- It almost sounds like it's turning into Google.

Exactly. So it's like, you need to infuse your profile with keywords that might be found in your target audience's profile. And then you need to infuse those keywords in your actual posts. And then LinkedIn is doing a better job of matching people who want similar content

with your content, especially if you're somebody that they've identified as an expert in the topic that you're talking about. So you might have that LinkedIn top voice badge, or even if your past job history has the same keywords, or you've been recommended for skills in that area, they'll identify you as an expert and start serving your content to people who want it.

So keywords are becoming increasingly important. Very cool. Specifically, you're talking to content creators, folks who might be trying to gather together an audience, do these same tactics and utilizing some of these same features. Does that also work for someone who's basically looking for just a great paying job with a like more

of a corporate gig. Does that also translate? Yeah, so a lot of the people that I work with, I have a LinkedIn masterclass and most of them are entrepreneurs, coaches, they've got some sort of small business, but then I do have a lot of corporate professionals and what happens is that it gives you more stability in the corporate world. I even started my, my, my journey on LinkedIn in the corporate world. And I remember immediately that like, I started getting more opportunities, more exposure, I was getting noticed by higher ups and even somebody today, I have a mastermind, her name's Anita.

She was telling me that she, in her job, that like everyone now is taking notice and asking her about LinkedIn and she's getting more visibility from higher ups because of everything that she's doing on LinkedIn. So a lot of people get scared of using their LinkedIn for their own personal benefit, but that is a transferable asset. You've got to think that if you're in corporate, you might want to switch jobs one day. You might want to start your own thing. This is your way to start building that foundation while you have the stability of a full-time job.

So I always encourage people to start building their personal brand. You need that more than ever now, even when people are looking to give you a job, they want to see you having some sort of personal brand and presence. So I think it's a win win for everybody. Yeah, taking some time to be regular, to kind of become a thought leader in your industry. It's only gonna be good for you. It's only gonna bring you connections

and potentially job offers as well. Question for you, when you're posting on somebody else's site, especially one of these tech companies and the algorithm determines what everyone's gonna see, you're alluding to it, that can change, right? And so it favors one thing over another at different times and it can diminish your voice too

and it can really, after you've spent years building something, it can kind of pull the rug out from under you. I was talking to someone the other day and they built up a pretty substantial Twitter following and then boom, Twitter changes the algorithm and it feels like their post is yelling into the void. So how do you think about, and I think that's why people

have prioritized newsletters because it's this direct connection to your audience. Full control. Yeah, nobody can really take away. So how do you think about building and spending so much time creating on a platform that you don't have as much control of? I am a really big advocate of email lists.

So I've been like driving all of my following to webinars where I'm collecting everybody's email and like rapidly growing my email list, because it's true, these platforms can change. They can also decide to specifically target you based on your beliefs, which is really crazy. Like one day we're gonna look back and we're gonna, we won't be able to believe

that all of this was legal, to be honest. It is really, really messed up what they're doing to people based on beliefs, which is like totally unfair, I think. It's amazing how a few people working at a tech company can have such a domino effect on all the rest of us, and we just think, oh, this is the way the technology operates, but no, there's human control

and human input into how it operates. Exactly, but long story short, and this is actually gonna be the topic of my first book, is that algorithms always change, but human behavior doesn't. So algorithms change all the time, but a lot of the stuff that I teach in marketing in my classes and stuff is human behavior,

because human behavior never changes. And LinkedIn literally has a goal to make sure that when something goes viral, they're actually studying it to find out how that happened so it doesn't happen again. They don't want just 1% of the creators having all the impressions. They want it to be more flat

where it's just like experts delivering content to people who want it, right? So they're actually not wanting people to go viral, but they can't control at the end of the day what makes people click the share button. They can try all they want, but human behavior doesn't change, right? So it's just like understanding what are the things

that I need to do that are evergreen, that no matter what platform I go on, it's gonna work because human psychology doesn't change. I love that. Things that serve and help people. Sounds like a promising book is what that sounds like. Yeah. Okay, so on your podcast you always ask folks,

what is the secret to profiting in life? So we're gonna actually turn the tables back on you a little bit. We're curious to hear your response. What is it that allows folks to profit the most of life? What is the secret to profiting in life? I think I'm gonna tie it back to what we were talking about earlier and that's skills.

I think the reason why I've been really successful is because I fully absorb myself in whatever I'm doing. When I started a podcast, I didn't just learn how to be a good interviewer. I didn't just learn how to put on the recording software and figure out the equipment. And I, I looked at everything. How can I grow? How can I monetize? How can I, you know, create a business out of this?

I looked at every single nook and cranny and figured it all out. And that's how I became successful. I wasn't the best podcast host. I'm still not the best podcast host, but I'm literally like number 87 podcast in the world. Why? Because I just figured, I figured out what I am good at

within the whole realm of podcasting. And I just milked every little inch that I could and figured it all out, you know? So it's like, I meet a lot of podcasters now, for example, that like don't know how to monetize or don't. And to me, it's like mind boggling how they didn't learn their entire industry, even if they're not the best at every single part, but like fully understanding the landscape

of what they're trying to play in, right? And I think a lot of that has to do with like absorbing yourself, not being afraid to learn, like being willing to roll up your sleeves and do the nitty gritty. Like eventually you can outsource things, but you should know how to do everything yourself first. So it's like learning the skills,

really absorbing yourself, not being afraid to learn. And just, again, like learning things A to Z and not trying to find shortcuts to your success. That's great advice. Paula, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can our listeners find out more about you and what you're up to? Thanks guys, I really had a great advice. Paula, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can our listeners find out more about you and what you're up to? Thanks guys, I really had a great time.

Young and Profiting is the name of my show. I interview the brightest minds in the world and it is a fantastic show. You can listen, learn and profit over there. You can also find out more about my company at Yap Media, that's Y-A-P media.io. And there you can find out about my social agency, my podcast network, which is the number one

business and self-improvement podcast network. I've got podcasters like Jenna Kutcher, John Lee Dumas, Amy Porterfield in my network. So it's really growing fast. And then if you guys wanna learn about LinkedIn, I have a two-day workshop. You guys can actually use code HTM for 35% off at yapmedia.io slash course. That's right.

And we'll make sure to link to all of that in our show notes. Hala, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. Thank you guys so much. you