Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: Skill-Stacking and the Art of the Pivot (Young Money Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. Well, hello, hello, young and profitors. Today we have a special episode for you all. We are playing my interview on the Young Money Podcast hosted by Tracy Bassett. The Young Money Podcast features the stuff that you millionaires in the making need to know to kickstart your financial fitness journey.

Starting point is 00:00:42 The host of the show is Tracy Bassett. She's the founder of Beset Financial Fitness, also an award-winning financial literacy champion. And she gives you the straight goods each week on the podcast to set yourself up for financial success. In this episode, I talk to Tracy about why the best investment you can make is actually in your cells.

Starting point is 00:01:02 We discuss the importance of diversifying your experiences, stacking your skills, and how to implement a talent stacking strategy in your career. Without further ado, here's my interview on the Young Money Podcast hosted by Tracy Bassett. Welcome to the show, Halla. Hi, so happy to be here. So Halla is dubbed the podcast princess and is the host of Young and Profiting podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:28 Frequently ranked as a number one education podcast across all apps. She is also the founder and CEO of YAP Media, a social media and podcast marketing agency for top podcasters, celebrities and CEOs. She is well known for her engaged following and influence on LinkedIn, and she's an expert on networking, personal branding, leadership, social media, side hustles, entrepreneurship, and podcasting. So welcome again, Hala. I'm very excited for this conversation, and I feel like your listeners are going to find value in my journey and some of my topics. Excellent. What love. You can start by sharing a little bit more

Starting point is 00:02:06 about your day to day and what your life looks like. Sure, so today I'm the host of a number one podcast that's called Young and Profiting. I'm also the CEO of YAP Media. It's a social media and podcast agency, and I run a podcast network. So I have a team of about 60 employees around the world. It's basically split up into thirds.

Starting point is 00:02:25 I have a third of my employees in the US, a third in the Philippines, a third in India, and so I have a global team that works around the clock. And my primary job right now as CEO is to be the face of the company, to be the spokesperson of the company on the main sales engine. So most of the clients that come to my yet media agency are actually guests who come on the podcast and I, you know, do everything from the discovery calls to creating the proposals to sending out the contracts and closing the sales. So I'm really the main sales engine of our organization. And my job is to just keep all these client relationships healthy,

Starting point is 00:03:03 to do a great job on the podcast, to make sure that our brand has visibility. And that's primarily what I spend my days doing, doing interviews and making sales calls, whether that's for sponsorships or clients for my podcast and social agency. Excellent. Well, you've achieved so much success to date, and I know you have many more years ahead of you and lots more to achieve. When you think about the success that you've achieved, have there been any kind of key themes or traits that have kind of shown up repeatedly that you think have led to this success? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the key things that I did well is I got a lot of experiences at a young age. And so I would say I had about 15 different jobs

Starting point is 00:03:48 by the time I graduated college. So a lot of people, they take the mindset of like, I don't start real life and real work until I graduate college, especially if you're from an immigrant family and your parents want you to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, dentist. A lot of those kids, they don't get experiences

Starting point is 00:04:07 before they actually get their first job as a doctor or a lawyer, and then they hate their job because they didn't get enough experiences to know what they liked, what they didn't like, what they were naturally good at, what they weren't naturally good at. And so for me, I think about my journey and I worked at every store in the mall.

Starting point is 00:04:23 I shampooed hair, I worked at a gift shop. I just had so many different experiences and it taught me how to work really hard so that when I did get a real job, it was no sweat to just work really hard and being a service-based business and retail. It's not the best experience in terms of like the day to day, but it teaches you grit and hard work and sales. So now fast forward, you know, I had a whole corporate career and all this stuff. Now I'm back in this sales role and I'm completely crushing and it's from the skills I learned when I was a teenager working at the mall. And I've made millions off of those skills and just stacking your skills is so important in today's age. I think a lot of people think you need to just get really good at one thing.

Starting point is 00:05:10 Well, I'd like to argue that if you're pretty good at 10 things and you can stack them together in a unique way, you can put out an incredible offering to the world. So I'll give you an example. Scott Adams taught me this phrase called talent stacking. And essentially, he's a great example of this. So he's a creator of Dilbert. It's one of the most widely syndicated cartoons in the world. It's in like every major newspaper translated in like 50 different

Starting point is 00:05:35 languages. He's wildly successful. This cartoon Dilbert. And Dilbert is a cartoon about, it's like a funny cartoon about a guy who works in IT. And so Scott could draw fairly well. He's not the best artist in the world. He was pretty funny. He had business acumen. And he put all those skills together and became literally top five cartoonists ever to exist.

Starting point is 00:06:00 And I feel like I'm very similar. I had, you know, before I started a young and profiting podcast, I had hosted five or six different shows. It was a completely different genre. It was music. I had radio experience. I started my career at Han-97 radio station, so I knew how to audio edit, I knew how to produce shows.

Starting point is 00:06:17 I also managed social media for Fortune 500 companies, and I had all that experience in my belt. I had a blog site before that, so I had a thousand blogs. I had written. So by the time I launched Younger Puffing Podcast, I had stacked up my skills and my foundation was so strong that my first couple episodes were great. And by the way, it's okay to not be good right off the bat. But what I'm trying to say is that when you start from scratch, you're actually not starting from scratch, you're starting from experience, especially if you've tried and failed a lot in the past. And that was definitely me.

Starting point is 00:06:49 So when I started from scratch with Young and Prof. Podcast, I actually didn't start from scratch. I started from a great foundation of all these past ups and downs and failures that ultimately gave me lots of life and business experience and skills. Excellent. And I know listeners, you should be taking note of this and all of you can learn different sorts of skills and as Hala has mentioned, she had a lot of non-glamorous jobs but she certainly was able to develop a lot of skills so that she could stack them and then hit the ground running when she got to what she was most excited to pursue. So I think thank you very much for sharing all of that.

Starting point is 00:07:24 It's very interesting to learn about different jobs that people had when they were younger. I've interviewed some people recently who didn't work until they came out of university or college. It definitely creates a difference in people's skills, depending on their experience. 100%. Absolutely. I'd love to hear from your perspective a big financial challenge or something you wish you'd known a little bit earlier in your life could be something on the business side. It might be something personally, but a financial element, whether it's personal or on the business side.

Starting point is 00:07:54 Hmm. Very interesting question. So a financial challenge that I run into. Or it could be something you wish you knew earlier, because you had so many jobs. So I'm sure you were learning about money as a teenager. Yeah, so I mean, one thing that I wish I knew earlier is that there's just no point to put a whole lot of money, especially when you're young, into a savings account. You're much better off, in my opinion, to invest in companies that you love and that you feel

Starting point is 00:08:23 like you would refer to your friends. A company that you love so much that you feel like you would recommend it to a friend and you've gotten such a great experience. That's most likely a company that's going to succeed in the long run. And so you don't even need a lot of financial acumen to invest in the stock market. I remember when I was in college and I started getting into investing, I made like amazing returns, just investing in the companies that I personally liked. And you'll make so much more money than you would putting it in just a regular savings fund, which usually has like 0.01 interest rates and will barely, barely grow. The other thing is

Starting point is 00:09:01 you can put it in an index fund, which basically is going to make sure that you at least grow as the American economy grows, right? And so if you believe that the American economy is not going to just tank, then put it in an index fund. You're going to go 8 to 10% a year. That's way better than a savings account. So of course, you need to save, you know, I would say have three to six months of savings saved but after you've reached that point, start investing that money in different ways, investing yourself to get new skills, you know, invest in the stock market, invest in real estate, whatever it is, I would not just let your money sit in a savings account. I actually pulled out most of my money since COVID and sat on it for a long

Starting point is 00:09:46 time at a fear and I've just started reinvesting and I'm like kicking myself, I wish I started earlier. And so this is my sign to you guys if you got a lot of money sitting in the savings account and you don't need that money for years to come. Don't just let it waste away. Inflation is getting higher and higher and it's not going to be the best way to grow your money. Hold tight, everyone. Let's take a quick break and hear from our sponsors. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea, but you don't know how to move forward with it?

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Starting point is 00:13:43 had and the different experiences would love to know more how you started your business and what led to that and how all the pieces kind of aligned to bring it to this point. Man, my business, yeah, media happened so organically. It's like my favorite story to tell because it just goes to show you that if you're just paying attention to the opportunities around you, you can really make magic happen. And so my agency, I never ever thought I would be the CEO of a marketing agency. My goal in life was to use my voice to make an impact on the world. That was always like my main purpose in life when I was a young girl. I thought that meant I was gonna be a famous singer. I sang before I spoke. I left a thing, it was always my natural talent. And so I actually in college applied to internships

Starting point is 00:14:31 at radio stations because I was writing music and thought I was gonna push my music at the radio stations. But then once I was at the radio station, I realized I'm not gonna be able to compete with Beyonce, like let's get real. And I thought, you know, being an on-air personality and being the next, you know, Angie Martinez,

Starting point is 00:14:48 who was the voice of New York at the time, was a more realistic goal, but still a really great goal. And so I had the goal of being this personality, which in the end, I've become, right? So, yeah, in terms of how I actually started my business, it's a funny story because I had this podcast and I started it as a side hustle. I originally started it while I was working at Hulett Packard in marketing. And when I first started the podcast, like I had

Starting point is 00:15:13 mentioned to you guys earlier, I had a talent stack. And so I launched this podcast and it was great from episode number one. And this was four and a half years ago. It was before podcasting was as sexy as it is now. It was before everybody and their mom had a podcast. It wasn't so early though that it was so mainstream that nobody listened to podcasts. It was like right in this sweet spot of like there was still a gap, especially women talking about business, young women in podcasting. And so like I filled that gap. And like I said, I started out with a great foundation. And so my podcast was like above average in terms of quality. So I had super fans from the start.

Starting point is 00:15:51 And people would get so like magnetized to the podcast. And that's because I had a very pure mission. I had no intention of making money. I literally thought you couldn't make money podcasting. It was a hobby for me that I did as a passion to give back because I had been a struggling entrepreneur, then I finally made it in corporate and I wanted to help other people and young professionals level up their life and be inspired. And I wanted to, again, contact with these people that had all this wisdom that selfishly I wanted to learn and wanted

Starting point is 00:16:20 to distill that information to everybody who was listening. And so super fans would reach out on LinkedIn because that's where I was growing my audience. And they would be like, Hala, like, I listened to your podcasts, like I'm hooked. I listened to it every single day. You've changed my life. I want to help. How can I support? And so by episode two, I had my first volunteer, who's now my business partner owns 10% of everything.

Starting point is 00:16:42 By episode eight, I had 10 volunteers in a Slack channel. And so I had one guy from Estonia who was working on my websites. I had one guy from Atlanta who I taught how to do videos and he'd work on all my videos. And I just had people all over the world helping me for free for this podcast for like a couple of years. And I would just recruit these volunteers and interns.

Starting point is 00:17:02 Most of them would probably be reach out to me and then we started an intern program where we were kind of reaching out and saying like these volunteers and interns. Most of them would proactively reach out to me and then we started an intern program where we were kind of reaching out and saying like we are accepting interns. And it was just this organization that nobody got paid. I didn't even get paid. We just kept each other afloat and everybody put in, like, you know, I put in the most hours by far

Starting point is 00:17:19 and then other people put in like five hours a week and helped, you know, make young and profiting what it is today. And the podcast got bigger and bigger because I basically had 10 people helping me grow the show, which was incredible, like 10 people working for free on the show. And I started landing bigger guests and the guests would see our really, we had amazing videos and content. And I was really growing my following on LinkedIn and my podcast was a number one how to

Starting point is 00:17:44 podcast. And I was really growing my following on LinkedIn and my podcast was a number one how to podcast and I was crushing it and these celebrities would come on my show and they'd be like dumbfounded and they're like how are you doing this? Like can you do this for me? How are you growing on LinkedIn? How are you making these videos? And I would always just be like you know I'm sorry I can't help you. I've got a full-time job. I just have a volunteer team. They just helped me like no one's paid like this is just a hobby and I kept being like oblivious to the opportunity until one day and this was actually May of 2020 my dad was in the hospital suffering from COVID I was stuck at my parents house because I had COVID nobody wanted to talk to me It was right in the beginning of the pandemic and I was basically quarantined for months at my mom's house.

Starting point is 00:18:27 And I had no commute because at the time I was working at Disney, everybody was working from home. And Heather Mottahann came on my show and the same thing happened. She's like, I want you to help me with my marketing. Like she was a huge influencer on LinkedIn. She's like, you're crushing right now. Your videos are amazing.

Starting point is 00:18:40 I've never seen anything like it. Like, can you help me? And I was like, no, I can't. I was like, I'm busy. I have a job and my dad's in the hospital. I'm like, I can't do this right now. And she stalked me on LinkedIn. And she would comment on all my stuff. And she'd be like, I'm waiting for your call. I want you to do my videos. And so I was like, I was interested in Heather being my mentor. And so I was like, all right. You know, I understand that the mentee mentor relationship is all about giving, it's like a, it's not just the mentor giving to the mentee. It's a two way street. And I always do that. And so I was like, sure Heather,

Starting point is 00:19:12 I'll teach you how to make your own videos. And so I walked her through our Slack channel, our templates on Canva, our headline, our process. And she's like, Hala, she's like, I'm gonna tell you this once in a like, I need you to pay attention. I'm like, sure. And she's like, Hala, I literally had a call with VaynerMedia yesterday. And she's like, what you're showing me

Starting point is 00:19:34 is more impressive than what they showed me. She's like, wow. I wanna be your first client. And you're not gonna say, she's like, I promise you it's gonna work out. And I was like, okay, fine. And so I started her doing her videos for very cheap. Then it ended up being taking over her whole LinkedIn, taking over her whole podcast. And then one thing led to another. And two months

Starting point is 00:19:54 later, I landed my second official client and it was the $30,000 month retainer. And everything changed. I wasn't even incorporated. It I had was a PowerPoint. I had no website. I had no, I don't even know if you have media, the name, I think it was still young and profiting. Like, we didn't even have a company name. And I got a client for $30,000 a month. And I don't mean that to brag. I just mean to say, when you talent stack

Starting point is 00:20:19 and you've got the social proof, it's like the demand is just around. You need to pay attention to what people are asking you. What are they saying you're good at? So many people told me they wanted my videos, they wanted my marketing, they wanted my podcasting expertise and I ignored it for so long. I could have launched it a year earlier,

Starting point is 00:20:35 but timing is everything and nonetheless, that's how it all, that was the genesis of the app media was the guess I would come on my podcast, ask me for services and then one day I decided to give it a shot. And I started slowly. I started with videos only. We knew how to do that really well. Then I figured out how to basically standardize LinkedIn management because I did it really

Starting point is 00:20:55 well for myself. And then, you know, podcasting, I did it well for myself and I figured out how to standardize that and sell that. And then everything that we do is, I always do it for myself really well first and know that I can do it well. And then we offer it as a service. And so I'm always a guinea pig. And I think that's a great way to kind of get yourself out there

Starting point is 00:21:14 to do it for yourself first, especially if you have some sort of service that you're offering. Excellent. I love hearing that. And so interesting how it was kind of hitting you in the face and it took her to say stop listen to me I need you to do this for us so it's really wonderful and kind of on the same theme that you were just talking about because you've already shared so many lessons for those who are aspiring to start a side hustle or to start their own business. What are some success tips that you can share with them. to start their own business, what are some success tips that you can share with them? Well, I think when it comes to starting a side hustle and starting a business, whatever it is,

Starting point is 00:21:50 I took a really risk-free approach. I didn't quit my job at Disney until I had 30 employees around the world working for me and we were generating like almost six figures a month. And that's because I wanted to make sure that I wasn't making a mistake. I wanted to make sure this wasn't like a fluke thing and that there was real consistent demand.

Starting point is 00:22:07 And I wasn't going to jump out the window and make myself unsustainable financially for this. So it's like, first of all, test, right? Before you invest a lot of money, I would say invest two to five hundred dollars in every idea and no more than that. So no logo, no website. Make sure you've got great presentation skills, make sure you've got proof. I would even do services and give away things for free to get validation and to get referrals

Starting point is 00:22:36 and make sure that you actually have demand. And I'm not talking about demand with Facebook ads and things like that. I'm talking about organic demand, meaning if you can't sell it to your existing network, your existing friends family, the people that you're connected to on LinkedIn and Instagram, then you probably don't have product market fit, right? And so you want to make sure that you're going into business with something that's going to be a downstream experience for you in terms of sales. Because it is so hard to try to push a product on people that nobody wants. And so you want to make sure that you've got organic demand and part of that is testing. And

Starting point is 00:23:14 like I said, before you get too far in investing, you want to make sure that it's easy to sell three to five of whatever you're trying to sell before you go and invest more into it. We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. Hear that sound, young and profitors. You should know that sound by now. But in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you sell edgy t-shirts or offer an educational course like me, Shopify

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Starting point is 00:29:57 Masterclass.com-profiting. Certainly, you do want to test, because you've got to get that client feedback to make sure that you're offering something that people need and love what you talked about with your skills, having the presentation skills, perhaps doing some work for free, maybe so you can get that social proof. So, that's great. You've mentioned already, it took you a little bit longer to start the business because you were kind of ignoring what was going on.

Starting point is 00:30:24 Are there any missteps that either you've seen happen to other people or have happened to you that you love our listeners to avoid? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the biggest mistakes that I see and I'll just take a podcasting for an example, but you can apply this in anything, is to do the same thing and like let's say you're not getting results and to just keep going on a certain path because you believe that's the only path to success. So like I said, one goal was to be a voice for this generation to use my voice to make an impact in the world. I never had the goal of starting a marketing agency.

Starting point is 00:31:00 That was never in my head. And which is why it was so unobvious to me to take that step But it wasn't until I took the step of of Capitalizing on the demand that was in front of me that I was able to accomplish my goal of becoming a top-podcaster Because as soon as I was able to start actually making money that changed everything I was able to invest in the marketing of my podcast I was able to invest in the marketing of my podcast. I was able to invest in a proper team. I've got the social team of like, you know, Fortune 500 CEO because I own the agency. And I basically created an agency whose job was to blow me up as a

Starting point is 00:31:36 podcaster essentially, right? And it's because I was aware of that opportunity. Similarly, you know, when I was first starting out, I thought that the only way to win in podcasting was to be big on Apple. And I kept, you know, beating that dead horse for a year or so until I finally realized there's 70 other apps out there. There's 70 other opportunities for me to be a top podcast or Apple is not featuring me. There's no way to get featured. I have a podcast called Young and Profiting Yap. Nobody's searching for that. I'm not going to change the name at this point. And what for whatever reason Apple's not showing me any love and I'm tired of this downhill battle, right? I should say. And so I started reaching out to Casbock's and Player FM and all these other apps and I said,

Starting point is 00:32:20 hey, I'm big on LinkedIn. I've got at the time I had 60,000 followers, which was big at the time. And, you know, I'll promote you on LinkedIn if you promote when you're at an exchange. And I started to get more creative and leveraging the assets that I had built, even though my podcast wasn't a big asset yet. I grew my LinkedIn. And so I leveraged that asset. And all these apps started saying, Yes. And now fast forward to today, I'm super close with all those apps. They feature me all the time. I sell ad space to my clients to those apps. And on an app like Caspex, I have 260,000 subscribers alone on player

Starting point is 00:32:56 FM. I have 80,000 subscribers. I'm still not that huge on Apple, but I'm one of the biggest podcasters in my genre in the world, you know, and it's because I took a unique approach And it didn't just stick to the same thing over and over that didn't work. I'm always pivoting Until I make it happen. It's tenacity, right? Like I'm not gonna take no for an answer if this way doesn't work There's another way to the same outcome. You can't be so laser focused on the exact path. You've got to be flexible outcome, you can't be so laser focused on the exact path you've got to be flexible. Love that and so true. And we have a lot of, I'm a professor at a college here in Canada and so we have a lot of young people new to Canada, a lot of immigrants. So they're trying to figure out their way, but being able to be flexible and try to get to results is really key, whether it's

Starting point is 00:33:41 in your career or when you're starting a business. So thank you for sharing that. Now we're getting close to wrapping up. I've got a couple more questions for you. When it comes to financial matters, whether it's personal or business related, who inspires you? And it could be somebody we all know or might be somebody personal in your life. So when it comes to financial matters specifically. So there's a couple people that have been on my podcast that are amazing. Bola San Bookie, she is an African American woman. She has an amazing YouTube channel on platform and she's just brilliant in terms of how to invest and save and make your first, you know, save your first 100k. It's really great for young people, especially so and young minority women.

Starting point is 00:34:25 really great for young people, especially. So, and young minority women. So, I would just definitely check out Bola B-O-L-A if you just Google that. You'll find all her stuff. Peter Malook. He is the world's top financial advisor. He's been on my show several times. He's brilliant, gives amazing investment tips for the stock market and really practical advice. And so I also love Peter Malook. Excellent. And before I let you go, what final pieces of advice or insights would you love to leave the listeners with? It might be something you already mentioned that you want to reiterate or reinforce or maybe something brand new you want to leave them with. So the last thing I'll leave you with is when it comes to financial gain, a lot of it has to do with confidence and your outlook on the world and what you believe is possible. And so one of the reasons why I feel

Starting point is 00:35:13 like I am aware of my opportunities, especially nowadays, is because I truly believe that life is limitless. A lot of the limitations that we put on ourselves are self-made, you know, or something that you were taught when you were little. So what I would recommend is that you do the work to let go of any sort of limiting beliefs. There's so much documentation about it. I have so many episodes on you, I'm a profiting podcast about positive thinking and things like that, but letting go of limiting beliefs, negative thoughts, and truly believing that you can accomplish any goal that you want and retraining your subconscious mind to believe that you will start to see the opportunities that you are otherwise blind to and then you need to take action on those opportunities. Of course you can't just dream and wish for your success. So believing that life is limitless and then taking relentless action towards your dreams are what I would like to leave with you guys today. Excellent. And what are you working on now? We're certainly going to put all your links

Starting point is 00:36:12 in the show notes, but if there's anything you'd like to direct listeners to specifically, yeah, please feel free to share. Well, I would love it if everybody could go check out Young & Profiting podcasts. We're a number one self-improvement and education podcasts across all apps. So I've interviewed people like Matthew McConaughey, Deepak Shopras, Seth Godin, Edmila Let, Dave Asprey, Robert Green. We talk about everything from human behavior, how to negotiate, how to do better in sales,

Starting point is 00:36:37 to the art of entrepreneurship and the art of side hustles. And there's so much amazing content. I do incredible research. It's such a great show. So check out Young and Profiting podcasts on your favorite podcast platform. Excellent. And certainly we'll share that link in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:36:53 Thank you so much, Hal, for joining us today. I've loved our conversation. I really appreciate your enthusiasm and energy. The way you've inspired us to believe that life is limitless and we really need to take action. And just through everything you shared in terms of your experiences and kind of the twists and turns your career is taken to date, I think is very inspiring. Loved what you shared about testing, being able to go out and present things, being able

Starting point is 00:37:20 to get those sales. And how you talked about the skills stacking on that take on the talent stacking, I think that everybody can benefit from thinking about themselves in terms of what are my skills and how can I stack them to create a future for themselves that they don't actually know where it's going to end up when they get started. So thank you so much for sharing everything with us today. Of course, it was my pleasure, Tracy. Thank you as well.

Starting point is 00:37:59 Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the happier with Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project, and every week we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without

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Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: Skill-Stacking and the Art of the Pivot (Young Money Podcast)

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