Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Stephynie Malik: Spin It - Get Out of a Crisis | E136
Episode Date: October 11, 2021Turn your obstacles into opportunities! In this episode, we are talking with Stephynie Malik, CEO, business consultant, crisis expert, and podcast host. She is the CEO of SMALIK Enterprises - a global... Executive Transformation, Crisis Management, and Business Consulting firm. In her 25+ year successful career, she’s been an award-winning CEO of a global consulting firm for over a decade, a serial entrepreneur that spearheaded multi-million dollar acquisitions and mergers while working with more than 11 start-ups globally. Stephynie is hailed as an expert negotiator and skilled crisis management consultant in the industry and helps top-notch athletes, executives and businesses take their careers and organizations to the next level while also resolving high conflict and crisis cases for individuals and companies. She is also the host of the Spin It Podcast - where she talks with guests like Claude Silver, Tiffani Bova, and John Lee Dumas on how to turn obstacles into opportunities. In today’s episode, we discuss Stephynie’s complicated childhood, her journey to emancipation, and what she took from her childhood looking back. We’ll also dive deeper into what the crisis management process looks like, how to have executive presence, and Stephynie’s top tips for scaling a business. We’ve never touched on crisis management on YAP in the past - this is one you won’t want to miss! Sponsored by - Gusto. Get three months free when you run your first payroll at gusto.com/YAP Indeed. Get a seventy-five dollar credit at indeed.com/YAP Social Media: Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at Hala@YoungandProfiting.com Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on Clubhouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Timestamps: 01:01 - Stephynie’s Childhood 04:50 - Stephynie’s Relationship with Her Mother and Her Background 07:05 - The Journey Towards Emancipation 13:30 - Stephynie’s First Real Job 15:40 - Biggest Learnings From Her Tough Childhood 18:21 - What is Crisis Management? 19:33 - The Process of Crisis Management 24:53 - Lying vs. Being Good at Lying 30:04 - Stakeholders in Crisis Management 35:07 - How to Prepare Clients For Court Hearings 38:56 - The Way Stephynie Figured Out the Crisis Process 48:27 - What To Do If You Want to Get Into Crisis 50:08 - Tips on How To Have Executive Presence 51:16 - Advice on How To Scale Your Business 53:30 - How Stephynie Started a Podcast (Even Though It Wasn’t Natural) 56:56 - Stephynie’s Secret to Profiting in Life Mentioned In The Episode: Stephynie’s Executive Presence Course: https://stephyniemalik.com/elevated Stephynie’s ScaleOS Course: https://www.stephyniemalik.com/scaleos Stephynie’s Website: https://www.stephyniemalik.com/ Stephynie’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephyniemalik/ Stephynie’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephyniemalik/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This week on YAP, we're chatting with Stephanie Malik, an award-winning crisis management expert
and business strategist. Stephanie is also the CEO and founder of Malico and S Malik Enterprises
and the host of the Spinit Podcast. Stephanie has been in the entrepreneurial game for over 25
years and has consulted for brands like Nike, United Airlines, and American Express.
After spending years as a serial entrepreneur and business consultant, Stephanie pivoted
into founding her own crisis management company.
In today's episode, we talk about Stephanie's journey with her father's death and her emancipation
from her mother at age 15, and how all that adversity only made her stronger and her
purpose more clear.
We'll also get a deep dive into Stephanie's world
of crisis management,
what it means to help others in tricky situations,
and how discovering your skill sets,
being an active listener,
and having confidence are some of the most important assets
you can have in business.
I had so much fun talking with Stephanie today,
and I think you're gonna love it too.
Hi, Stephanie, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
Thank you, Hala, thanks for having me.
These are my favorite types of interviews.
I love interviewing people that I know very well
because it makes for a really fun interview.
I feel like I didn't have to study
because I know so much about your life already.
And I feel like it's gonna be such a great conversation.
So Stephanie, you are an award-winning business consultant. You are a crisis management expert.
You've been behind the scenes on so many different headlines that people have heard about.
They just didn't know that it was you behind the scenes helping those people get out of those
crisis. It's super exciting what you do and really innovative in terms of what you've built.
So I can't wait to get into all of that.
But we always like to start off with childhood.
We like to talk about people's journeys.
And I know you had a really crazy come-up story.
So talk to us about a turning point in your life.
And I think that's when your dad died.
Talk to us about that moment and what happened after.
Sure, so it's a little bit more complicated than that,
so let me just take a little bit of a step back.
So my mom was married to who I thought was my father.
And they got a divorce when I was very young.
They got a divorce when I was under two.
And I had kind of my father had been married
several times before.
And so I had siblings.
I had half siblings.
And what happened was he didn't really see me after the divorce at all.
And so it was really hard kind of keeping up with my siblings because I was so young and
they would try and call, but then you don't really know what's going on when you're a kid.
So fast forward, Halle.
And I was in middle school,
my mom showed up at middle school and said,
hey, you actually have to do a blood test
because your father got diagnosed with cancer.
And imagine middle school, I'm like, absolutely not.
I'm not, I don't even know him.
I'm not doing this, no way, no shot.
Long story short, I ended up getting in the car.
And that was it.
I got in the car, I went and did the blood test,
and that was all.
About eight months later, I was walking to my mother's office and I stopped by the lab
on the way up to go get my mom's lab slips because my mom was a hospital administrator.
And on the top of the stack of the envelopes said my name. And I was like, that's super weird
nod but whatever. And I opened it up, Paula, and it said,
paternity denied.
And I was like, what does that even mean?
So I jumped back in the elevator,
I went all the way back downstairs,
I called on a pay phone,
because obviously there was no cell phones,
and I called one of my dear friends,
her dad was a pathologist,
and I said, hey, I'm actually doing a report for school.
Could you help me with something? And he said, hey, I'm actually doing a report for school. Could you help me with something?
And he said, sure, and I write them the report
and he goes, oh, honey, no problem at all.
What that means is the two people that gave blood
are not biologically related.
And my heart sunk shattered.
I was 15 years old.
My siblings weren't my siblings.
My nationality wasn't my nationality.
My entire life was one big, giant, horrible lie.
And I just unraveled.
I remember I called a couple probably at the time
non-savory friends, and I basically was hysterical.
And I just said, this is what's going on.
The worst part about everything, Hala,
is you know in a Middle Eastern family, you know this.
Everybody's related.
Everybody kind of knows like everything about they knew.
And I didn't know.
And when I saw their faces, they were like,
oh, like they didn't even know what to do.
And I flipped out.
I was rageful, I was angry, I was screaming And I flipped out. I was rageful.
I was angry.
I was screaming.
I was yelling.
I was crying.
And I said, take me to him right now.
And then they further sunk.
And I said, what?
And they said, he's not here, stuff.
And I didn't calculate to me.
I was like, what do you mean he's not here?
Like, what does that mean?
Just tell me where he is.
And they were like, he's gone.
He drowned.
He drowned when you were a tiny baby.
And I was just so incredibly sick about it.
Now, as you well know, much later on,
I found out that my mom had a complete nervous breakdown
when he had passed away.
He drowned in a lake.
It took him an insurmountable time to find him.
It wasn't a straightforward thing
and she kind of never recovered.
So yeah, it was not a fun experience.
Wow, that's crazy that that's what you found out at 15.
How was your relationship with your mother
and what did your mother do for work?
So my mom was a hospital administrator.
She worked for an office building.
And basically she did reconciling of accounts.
So whatever lab accounts were or medical accounts
were, she was an administrator.
She reconciled all the insurances,
the private pays, et cetera, et cetera.
Wasn't college educated.
Again, as you know, my mom's first,
I'm first generation here from my mother's side,
they're from Portugal.
And so my mom was not, my mom barely finished high school
and she was not college educated
and she got a really, really good job
but was a single mom from a very young age.
And my mom after this happened, you know,
mental wellness and mental health is such a priority now.
But back then, it is such a priority now.
But back then, it wasn't a priority. People would go, oh, they're a little off
or, oh, you know, they get angry a lot.
There wasn't really a ton of labeling.
And so, I don't think people understood child abuse.
I don't think people understood emotional neglect.
Nobody really understood that.
And then how could she not?
Like, the love of her life just drowns.
And then she has to quickly pivot to figure out a father
or a father figure for a child.
You know, there's a lot on her.
We had no relationship and the relationship that we did
was highly, highly hurtful and tumultuous.
And sadly, it really never got any better.
There were times where there was a glimpse of,
hey, maybe it could get better,
but people with mental illness
that don't seek help on their own
with their own therapies and their own resources,
it's their choice and they choose not to get better
and she passed away about four years ago.
Okay.
Well, I'm sad to hear that you guys never
like, you know, mended your relationship.
We can talk about that later and see like, you know,
what you've been doing to kind of mentally get over that.
But let's talk about what happened at 15 years old
because from my understanding, at 15, you were on your own,
you were paying your own bills,
you basically separated yourself.
I think it's called emancipation, correct?
So talk to us about what happened, what happened next?
Yeah, so, okay, so basically I was like,
I wasn't great in school, like I just didn't really care.
What was I gonna finish school for?
Nobody in my family finished school.
My friends were all, my friends were,
you know, looking back, my friends were amazing.
The way that they loved me and the way that they protected me
and the way that they looked out for me.
But they weren't like, hey, Steph, you shouldn't do that.
You need to do this over here.
It was kind of like, you know, birds of a feather,
you know, guilty association, whatever cliche you wanna say.
So they weren't bad people, but they were really comfortable
and staying where they were going to stay.
And I wanted out of that small town.
I wanted nothing to do with it.
I wanted to be completely rid of everything from there.
And so I guess school was the answer,
but I didn't really have anybody checking my homework
or going, hey, did you do that?
Or there was really no one.
And so at 15, I went to go quit school.
And my, I was, I was very tired. Very tired.
You should have seen me with my hand on my hip.
I was going in there and I was gonna give them out.
And I remember his name is Chuck Videll, okay?
And he was the principal of the school
who later moved on to be the superintendent
of all the schools, okay?
He was like, yeah, we're not, sorry, yeah, no.
And I was like, you can't tell me what to do.
And like I was, you know, and he was like, ah, okay,
so here's what we're gonna do.
And he didn't let me quit.
He put me on something a lot more manageable for me.
I finally fast up and I told him the entire story.
And he said, do you have anybody that you can call?
And I called my oldest aunt.
My mom is one of seven.
There's 20 years difference.
My mom was the youngest and my aunt was the oldest.
And I called her and I said,
I don't want anything, I don't want any money.
I just need you to go be what they call a character witness.
And she was like, what are you up to now, Stephanie?
Like, what are you doing?
And I'm like, I don't really know,
but just be there at three o'clock.
And so I went in, I went into the court and I walked like, I don't really know, but just be there at three o'clock. And so I went in, I went into the court
and I walked over to the lady
and I didn't know any of the words
and I said, how do I get away from my parents
and you know, blah, blah, blah,
and she was like, I'm surprised she didn't
throw a net on me,
but she gave me the paperwork
and I tried my best to fill it out
and there was this awesome man next to me
who turned out to be an attorney.
I told him the story, he said,
come back here tomorrow morning at nine.
And I said, okay, and he filled out the paperwork for me.
And he walked in and let the judge hear the case.
And my aunt was there and said,
everything that she's saying is completely true.
And the judge said to me,
in all of the cases I have ever heard,
I have never, ever granted immediate
emancipation. Never. He's like, I've always taken under submission. I've always looked
at other resources to be able to give this child. And he's like, I'm granting you full emancipation.
And he goes, I need you to know something. You are an adult from the second you walk out
this door. He said, you will be tried as an adult. You will be privileged as an adult from the second you walk out this door.
He said, you will be tried as an adult.
You will be privileged as an adult.
You will be anything you can imagine
will be an adult from here on out.
And I was like, okay, great.
Like it didn't even hit me the repercussions.
And that's what it was.
Filling out, I mean, imagine in your head, imagine,
filling out a lease for an apartment.
I didn't know it first last in deposit was.
I didn't know, people were looking at me
like I had lost it and I was like, no, I can do this.
So I took three buses to three different jobs.
I worked at Contempo Casuals.
I worked at Foster Farms Chicken, not, by the way,
not hot when like the super smoke and hot guy walks in the door that you like and you're ducking to hand the counter.
And everybody's calling you kind of up.
And I finished school and independent study and it worked really, really, really hard.
And I just, there wasn't an option to fail, Halle. There was no option to fail. This is what I had to do. That is crazy. Do you ever look back and feel like,
do you feel like you made the right decision at 15 years old?
Do you wish that people treated you more like a child
and told you like, no, you can't do this?
You don't know what you're doing?
I think about that as each one of my kids
have gotten to that age,
and I've assessed their maturity level,
or I've assessed their maturity level or I've assessed
where they are emotionally or I've assessed those type of things in my head, in my heart,
I'm like, I had no business being on my own at all, but there wasn't another option.
There was no one in this circle that could have really lent a hand, you can't impeach on another family.
You can't burden another family.
You can't go to another family and expect that you're going to be taken care of.
I had a grandmother, she was amazing and she was awesome, but I lied during the entire
time.
I never wanted to burden her.
I never wanted her to feel sad.
I never wanted her to feel disappointment in my mother.
That was her youngest child at the end of the day.
So in my sad now, like when I look back
on getting married and I look back
on all the fun girl things and you want your mom there,
the love of your life or heartbreak
or not getting into the school of your dreams.
Yeah, I said one time to my therapist
a long, long, long time ago.
I mean, it must have been, I mean, literally 20 years ago.
And I said, I just missed my mom.
And the therapist said, honey, I don't think you miss your mom.
I think you missed the idea of what a mother would be to.
And that made so much sense
because I was so close with all my girlfriends' moms
and I saw how they interacted
and I really understood that.
It wasn't, I didn't miss her.
She wasn't nurturing, she wasn't loving,
she wasn't kind, she didn't want me.
And you know, I understand that.
So I don't know that there would have been
a different option for me to be able to say,
I wish I was able to do Plan B.
Yeah, I totally feel that.
And wow, like you overcame so much.
So you basically grew up in Silicon Valley.
You had all these odd jobs.
At what point did you get your first real job?
Well, so my first real job was when I was 16 and a half, I had $122 in my, whatever it
was, my little savings account.
I took a greyhound bus to Long Beach.
I got a Penny Saver magazine and I looked for a place a room to rent.
I wrote a bad check that I didn't have the money to cover.
I got a hostess and waitress job where I would get tips. And at the time, your bank would deposit the check three times before it actually bounced.
And so I knew I had a week to make up $300.
And so I went and I rented a room from a woman who had nine, nine bloodhounds living in
her house, nine.
Hair everywhere, it was literally disgusting.
And I worked my butt off and the chat cleared,
and then I enrolled in junior college,
and I went through college like that.
In that time, I had two or three different waitressing jobs
that turned in to be like bookkeeping jobs
like Bobby McGee's.
Like serious jobs are I was working 20 or 30 hours a week.
From there, I met a gentleman who I started selling
large accounts for cell phones.
So like when like Pepsi or like Alamo rental car
would have new salespeople,
they would give them a company car
that had a cell phone in it.
And so I worked myself up to name the accounts at a very way too young.
I mean, I was under 20. I was making $50,000 a year.
And so those were kind of my first few real jobs where I actually, you know,
W2, like the whole nine yards, you really pay taxes, all that good stuff.
So that's how I did it.
Well, that's amazing. I mean, under 20, making 50 grand a year,
so you ended up getting
really successful really early. And I can imagine working so young and not just like, you know,
part time here and there, you know, money to buy clothes like you had to pay rent. You had to buy
your own food. You had to put yourself through college. You had real responsibility. What does that teach you, all those jobs? What do you
think you take from it now? I think I'm extraordinarily hard on my kids. Like all of them, I think I'm
super super like you probably should have them on your podcast. But like I think that you know,
I remember if you, so I remember the biggest mistake that I made financially. Okay. I left with
a girlfriend of mine. I got really excited.
One of my really good friends, parents were doctors.
And they invited me to Malibu to come stay
at their house for the weekend.
And I didn't have any other right clothes.
I didn't have any other right makeup.
I didn't even know, I cut my own hair.
I was really not that friend.
I was the friend that you brought home
that you were like, where'd you get her from?
That was me.
I knew how to speak to people. I was really kind to people. I was always very, very kind. And I was the friend that you brought home that you're like, where'd you get her from? That was me.
I knew I'd speak to people.
I was really kind to people.
I was always very, very kind and I was very resourceful, but I just didn't really fit
in because I didn't know how important clothes and makeup and all that was.
I was so excited to go, Hallette, I forgot to turn my air conditioning off at home.
And when I got the bill, the following month, it was $824.
And I didn't know what a payment plan was.
I didn't know, I didn't know any of the things
and I got my air conditioning turned off
for two and a half months.
Not only was it turned off, it was turned off
and then when I got it turned back on,
I had to pay a huge deposit to get it turned back on.
So like those type of things I didn't know.
And so those are the things that I've instilled in my children at a super young age, a savings
account, a donation account.
Like if they get $20, what are you saving?
What are you donating?
Whose life are you making better with it?
What does it look like?
Also too, my kids have graduated, so three of them have graduated high school, two of them have graduated college. We have a rule in our house and the rule is
you take the student loans, you take the student loans, and if you do well and you're a great person
and you work really, really hard and you get a good GPA and you have great recommendations,
we'll pay off your student loans. I need them to have realization of what the real world looks like.
They all graduated from high school, all of them graduated from high school with a 750
FICO score.
What 18-year-old knows that a FICO score is?
So I was pounding it into their head at a young age, what being a great member of society
and giving back and contributing, even if it's just your time or your smile or your what
you've learned with someone else.
I love that.
Okay, so let's talk about what you do now.
Let's define what crisis management is.
What is crisis management?
So the type of crisis management that I do is I help people that have made significant errors in judgment.
Generally speaking, it's around finance, divorce, or visibility.
Generally speaking, there's always that outlier.
Okay, but as a whole, it's usually kickbacks, Ponzi schemes, money laundering, bribery, infidelity, you
know, bid rigging, skimming money off the top of your company, creating shell accounts.
We work with these type of individuals because those type of individuals usually go out and
hire a white collar crime attorney.
They don't have any idea there's different ways to move about the journey
in a less public forum, if you will.
Got it.
So walk us through what would happen.
Somebody calls you up, they say, Stephanie, you're my girl.
I'm in a crisis.
What now?
Walk me through your process in terms of like all the different types of people you might
have to talk to.
Like, I know you do with the FBI and the CIA
and all the like walk us through just like an example
of what you would do with a client.
You're like, walk me through a normal crisis.
Any of them were just normal.
Okay, so let's talk about like,
let's just talk about a typical,
let's just talk about like a white color crime, like a financial crime., let's just talk about a typical, like a, like, let's just
talk about like a white color crime, like a financial crime.
So let's just say like a kickback or let's just say like a skimming type crisis.
And what's a kickback?
So a kickback is, so professional, most professional services are not allowed to receive any monetary
gain from a referral.
So for example, an attorney could say, oh, God, my really, really great friend Matt sells
Lamborghinis.
And then he gets a monetary, basically he gets money for referring.
You're not allowed to do that if for any point in time, this can come back to you as preferential
treatment.
Like you can't do it at all.
It's very specific for doctors.
It's very specific for attorneys. It's very specific for attorneys. It's very specific for therapists. They take a coat of ethics and they
know they are not allowed to receive any sort. Like an attorney can only refer another attorney,
but they can't be compensated for it. I was going to be surprised because I'm like, oh my gosh,
in my field, that's all we do is referring. I don't know.
It's actually really funny, it's actually super funny.
I'm gonna tell you this really quick.
So when I first started doing this,
because I ran a consulting firm,
a global consulting firm for like 16 years,
so when I very, very first started doing this,
my very first client sent me like a several million dollar client.
Okay, and this guy is like my father.
Okay, and he sent me this client and this client was a dream.
He never lied to me.
He told me everything that I needed to know.
He put me in touch with everybody.
He's like, you know what, Steph, that's a great question.
I don't know, let me put you, like everything just was so smooth.
So he was looking at several years in prison.
We were able to get him an unbelievably positive experience.
Okay, like a really positive, he's still at a consequence,
but it wasn't a public consequence.
It was actually a really good consequence
for he and his family that he was able to live with
and continue after he was finished
with his consequence leading his life.
Okay, so after this whole thing was over
and done with, I sent him a watch,
the guy who referred me, I sent him a watch.
And the case was over and I just go,
God, thank you so much for thinking about me.
So fast forward like two years later,
we are doing this big huge investigation
and the attorney walks in and it's a kickback case.
And we're in this giant boardroom in New York City
like on the 50th floor and they start talking about
the attorney sending gifts to, you know,
these different people.
And I'm literally sitting in my seat
and I'm shrinking and I'm shaking.
I'm getting further and further down
because I'm like, oh my God.
So after everything was, having a heart attack literally,
after everything was set and done,
I grabbed one of the attorneys,
I'm like, I have to tell you something.
And he was like, okay, and I told him,
and he was like, no, completely different.
He's like, your have to tell you something. And he was like, okay, and I told him, and he was like, no, completely different.
He's like, your professional services, absolutely.
And he's like, but this was a case where this person
who referred you had nothing to do with the case
or your future services.
So I was like, oh, God, okay, thank God.
So it was crazy though,
because I was really nervous about it.
Yeah, that is a really funny story.
And so, so everybody's clear, it's like,
it's certain professions that have to be careful about that
and it's certain circumstances.
It's really truly what it comes down to,
truly is the three that I've seen is it's therapists,
like so psychologist psychiatrists that you see
for any therapeutic, you know, means attorneys and doctors.
Those are the ones that are really just like the ethics board
is just on top of you all at all times. There could be more, but those are
the ones that I come across. Okay, so what is entailed? So I'm your girl. You call
me up and you're like, I accidentally stole a hundred million dollars from
my company. I'm so sorry. I have no idea what to do. So the first thing I do is I
assess if I believe you or not. I assess whether, like how deep was this crisis?
Did you have your sister involved?
Did you create a shell company?
Did you use your company credit card to buy misappropriated jet hours?
Like what exactly is the crime?
And how are you looking at me, Hala?
Like are you like, oh my god, I blew this?
Are you like, what is going on for you?
That initial meeting is how I assess
if I'll even take you as a client.
By the way, she only does this in person.
I was talking to her offline
and she will only do this in person only.
And her no circumstance, will I do it on Zoom or video
because body language and how somebody looks at you and
how they communicate with you and how they think or ponder a question is so important to
see because ultimately, Hall, I think about this. Ultimately, I'm getting them to their
best measure of success. Remember, but ultimately, they may be in front of a jury. So, I need to
look and see, are you gonna be detested the second
that you sit on the seat?
Yeah, well, how do you tell somebody's lying?
And does it matter if they're,
are you looking if they're a good liar,
or are you checking if they're lying?
Amazing question, both.
Okay, so first of all,
I hate when people lie to me
and then they get really upset about their bill, okay?
So they lie to me and go, get really upset about their bill. Okay?
So they lie to me and go, I have no other interest in any other companies.
And I was like, really?
No other companies, no advisory, no warrants.
You, you aren't on any boards.
You are all of your holdings are in the US.
Yes.
You're sure.
You don't consult for anybody else.
You don't have any other, like any other holdings.
Like, even if you're holding in a daycare, just tell me about it so I know.
I'm sorry, what is holding me?
And just speak, I know that if I'm confused,
definitely some listeners, what's holding?
Yeah, no, no, no, thank you for backing me up totally.
So it's where any of your time
that you could possibly be compensated for.
So anything that you could do, you consult,
are you on an advisory board?
Are you just adonating your time on,
we had a whole bunch of private equity guys
that got on Clubhouse at the very, very beginning
that were essentially going and saying all of their expertise
for a percentage of the company.
Well, 0 plus 0 is 0.
So if the percentage of the company is 0,
they still have given their time.
If that company gets bought, they're going to be compensated.
Okay, so I say any other holdings, any other time
where you're spending your time
other than this company right now
that's investigating you.
Okay, is there anybody?
Nope, nobody else.
Have you advised on your wife's company?
Have you advised on your children's company?
Have you advised at your son's school?
Have you any other place where they could say
this person benefited from this person's expertise?
No, absolutely not.
You're a thousand percent, yes, I'm a thousand percent sure.
In 48 hours, I'll get a list of, he advised here,
he advised here, he was warranted here,
he was compensated here, he was it and I'm like, dude.
I mean, right, like I mean, I don't, yeah,
I mean, it's more than dude. But I, yeah, I mean, it's more than dude.
But I'm like, so, and it's hysterical the way that I do it.
Like my entire team laughs now because I literally sit with them in a boardroom and I just
push the table, push the envelope across from them.
And I'm like, hey, is that your signature?
Because if not, we need to get our fraud team in here immediately.
Like your name is on seven companies in four countries,
three continents.
This is crazy and they're like,
oh,
and 70% of the time, I'll cut it right there.
I'm like, I'm really, really sorry.
Hopefully things work out for you.
Here's all your paperwork.
Thank you very, very much for coming
and I really appreciate it.
70% of the time I'm done.
30% of the time, I will say, are we good?
Do we have, are we gonna have to do this a couple more times?
Or are we good?
Do you understand that you're supposed to trust me
so I can get you the absolute best team?
From there, I talk about the second part
of your question was, are they a good liar, okay?
Are you a good liar?
And how would that be beneficial?
Okay? If you are a bad liar,
people are going to have a lot more empathy for you
when you're on the stand.
If you're a good liar, as you know from the episode
of the Mark Bowden, okay?
There's things that happen within your body.
There's the way that you move.
There's the way that you sit back. There's the way that you move. There's the way that you sit back.
There's the way you play with your hair.
There's a way you look up or look down to communicate.
If you do this, this loses connection with the people
that are either going to get you off or convict you.
So you have to see how this person comes across.
Do they have empathy?
Do they have connection?
Are they able to speak?
We have this one client, and he was the greatest guy ever,
but when he spoke, he sounded like the biggest punk
in the entire world.
Well, you know what we did?
We took him to a therapist.
I had a really great friend, he's a psychiatrist,
and I said, I think something's cognitively off.
He got diagnosed with Asperger's. So that would be great information to be able to know so you don't look off-putting,
so you don't look like a jerk, so you don't look like he was insanely brilliant and so smart.
His IQ was through the roof, but his EQ was nothing. It was horrible. So it really depends,
the lying aspect is number one first and foremost thing ever.
So I guess I'm a little unclear. So you want them to be a good liar.
In a sense, you don't want them to be good.
You want them to seem like you feel like when you're a good liar, you seem
arrogant or something along those lines.
I never want somebody to be a good liar. If you're a good liar, it means you're a proven
liar. It means you're a practice liar. I want you to be a good liar. If you're a good liar, it means you're a proven liar, it means you're a practice liar. I want you to be a terrible liar because if you're a terrible liar, you have empathy and connection. If you don't and you're a great
liar, you're a sociopath generally. Got it. So, let me be more clear for you. So, yeah,
so, so if you're a bad liar, you have holes because the reason why you holes in your
lying scheme is because there's parts of you that feel badly about lying.
If you just get up and you're able to just rattle one off and you're looking at somebody and you're completely connected,
there's something else very wrong with you.
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Okay, so walk me else, what happens in the process?
Like, what are the people that you end up talking to,
like PR, CIA, FBI, like, what are all the different,
like groups of people?
That's the thing I'm so interested about
because this is not something that is cookie cutter.
This is something custom that you've figured out
and it's mind blowing.
Yeah, okay, so no PR, so 38 clients,
38 clients and only one is ever, ever gotten to media.
You would know 20 of the names like that.
Okay, we do have a communication arm,
but we are not a crisis communication firm.
We are a crisis expertise management firm. So we have all of your resources.
So whatever you need, okay, you could need psychiatry, you could need psych... Like therapy
around psychologists or psychiatry, you could need medication because of anxiety or depression
and or ADHD or every other element you could possibly have cognitively, okay?
Most, we work with 65 global attorneys.
These attorneys, I hand select for you.
I meet with you, I meet with your family,
I meet with your adult children, I meet with your board,
I meet with your executive team,
I meet with every single person, whether they know or they don't know of what has happened.
And I'm just a business consultant.
I come in and I talk to them about their business
and I understand their family dynamics.
I see how their children or their wives
or their husbands interact with them
because people automatically think that all of our clients
are men and that's not the case.
We've had several women clients.
So I go through and figure everything else out.
I understand what they're asking for.
So this is the second part, Hala.
What is your very best outcome?
What is your measurement of success?
So if I have you on 300 recordings,
accepting kickbacks and accepting cash,
and you're like, oh, I was just really hoping
not to do any time.
Well, I'm not puffed the magic dragon or Houdini, okay?
Like, you've done it, it's recorded.
I have to at least go look at the FBI
and the CIA with counsel and look at them,
and be clear-hearted and have a clear conscience
about going to try and make this deal with them.
So you're going to have a consequence.
So I'm never gonna just blow a smoke and be like,
oh yeah, absolutely, completely. So the next thing I do is I basically go through
what is your measurement of success. And then I kind of give you some different options
because most of the time they don't know. They're like, okay, well, give me some options
on what could happen. So we do that. Once we figure out the measurement of success and
what will be a successful outcome, they leave,
I sit back with my team and I do initial assessment.
So I look and see who's available.
I look and see who has won the most cases.
I look and see who has the best relationships in this area, who has the best relationships
with a judge, who has the best relationships with the person investigating,
how opposing counsel is received.
It's a giant huge ecosystem of relationships
and care and concern and who has done the best work together.
Once I've done that, I give them suggestions for their team.
Generally, their team looks like this.
Professional services, so that's usually one or two white color crime attorneys.
It's generally an asset manager around,
are we going to have to liquidate assets
to pay back restitution?
Are we going to have to liquidate homes, et cetera?
Like, whatever needs to be liquidated.
It's generally a tax person,
because if for some reason we get you a lesser consequence, the next
thing we'll mostly will take over is another agency wanting to come after you.
So I don't want to close one problem and then have the IRS come after you for tax fraud.
So we get a bunch of different documents and a lot of different statements and we get a
lot of people involved.
Then we come and present you what we think is going to happen.
So there are PR people, there are social people, we do social campaigns, we do reputation
campaigns, but keep in mind, as a whole, that's 5% of our businesses because our clients
don't ever get known. So it's white collar, it's asset, it's some sort of therapy for
the family. It could be drug-related. It could be psychological safety
relationship. It could be whatever it happens to be. We have all of those resources. Meta
data getting your phone scraped, making sure that the opposing side gets the right and
proper data in an immediate fashion. It's setting up servers, so your content or your
images are safe on a server and not in the cloud. It is a bunch of different cybersecurity issues.
It's a bunch of different personal relationship issues
and then it's a bunch of different
professional services relationships.
It's such an interesting field.
I find it super fascinating.
So how do you get people prepared for these court hearings?
What are the types of things that you do?
So knock on wood, only two of our clients
have ever gone before live court.
Wow, so you tend to settle things outside of court.
Yes, and that is 1,000% because I have the absolute
best team ever.
So I have people that have deep relationships with agencies that you go have a cup of
coffee and go, hey, here's kind of the facts.
What are you thinking?
We've walked clients in.
So we've walked clients in to confess or we walked clients in to say, hey, this is
what, this is kind of how the scheme worked. Or this. Or I know you're looking for these pieces in the investigation.
I have those pieces.
Our job is not to make the agency's job harder.
Our job is to get this done handled and settled with the least amount of time and resources
so everybody can go about their life.
That's our biggest win-win.
Got it.
Got it.
So interesting.
So your job is to keep people out of court,
keep people out of the news, and keep it high-shush,
and that's why they hire you and give you the big bucks.
How much does it typically cost to navigate a crisis?
Oh gosh.
So that's so hard, Halle, because there's so many different,
there's so many different crises.
I mean, let me answer
like this. How honest are you willing to be? How much information are you willing to give
me immediately? Okay. And if that is the case, that generally is the three month bump.
That's usually, I didn't really know you needed that or I wasn't really certain that that
was important or imperative. Those are the things that slow down a case.
Those are the things that create bumps and trust.
Those are the things that kind of inflate the bill, if you will.
We have settled for, we've settled millions and millions and millions of dollars for a
million dollars.
We've settled over a hundred million dollars for five to seven million dollars. We've settled over a hundred million dollars for five to
seven million dollars. We have we've done where there's an assessment where we've
charged a half a million dollars for the assessment. We have found the loophole
and they've our client has kept the money and we've asked them to accept the
money back and close out the investigation.
We've had things like happen like that.
We've also had in the middle of freaking COVID cases
that haven't settled for two years
because federal court or state court
keeps opening and closing and opening and closing
and opening and closing.
So there's not really a number
what I will say for metrics purposes,
what we get told is based on our negotiation,
because remember, we negotiate the entire thing.
We negotiate the attorney's rates,
we negotiate the assets rate.
So like, I'm gonna sell this jet or this yacht for 7%.
We'll say no, thank you.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate it.
We only usually charge one to 3%.
They're like, okay, Steph, we'll do it for that.
So we negotiate everything.
So the attorneys that are two to three thousand dollars an hour, because we settle out so
quickly and because they really love how fast I can get them the information, sometimes
you get the strongest attorneys, all the name brand attorneys, for like seven, fifty to
fifteen hundred dollars an hour, which is half of what you would normally be spending.
I review all the invoices, I look through all the invoices.
We work with the absolute best state of the art attorneys, and they want to do a good job.
They just don't really want all of the emotion that's in the case, and that's something
the R team really takes off their hands.
Super interesting.
So let's talk about how you figured this all out.
There's so much to navigate.
It's not something you just go to school for.
And it's like you've built this whole ecosystem.
So walk us through how you figured all of this out.
So it really is just people.
It's really understanding people.
So the reason why businesses don't do this, Hallett, is because they don't really
know what the other person wants. So it's like, it's like me. If I brought you something
that was a product and I go, oh my God, Hallett, this guy is the best guy in the entire world
and he has this amazing product. And it's so good. I know you're a good friend of mine.
Will you do this for him? Products are not what you do. You don't do that. That's not who
you are. Would you do it for me? Probably are not what you do. You don't do that. That's not who you are.
Would you do it for me?
Probably, but does it highly align with you?
No, but if I brought you a celebrity, a star,
and I go, hold on, redo everything
because he's a disaster and here's your budget,
that would probably align with you.
I give cases to attorneys that love what they do. So I'm not going to give,
you know, I say this flip, but I'm not going to give like a DUI attorney, you know, a $60 million
Ponzi scheme. He doesn't like doing that. He likes the quick ones going in and meeting with
it, you know, with those type of judges. I really find out what people love to work with. I find out
how they're building their business, how they're building their portfolio, and I want to infuse it with good.
And so after doing this, or meeting with a psychologist, I was meeting with a psychologist who
was actually doing an interview with me, and she had such incredible business acumen,
it turns out she went to Harvard Business School and just hated everything to do with business
and really loved helping people.
So I thought, oh my God, she'd be so perfect for my clients who hate to go talk to a therapist
because all the therapist says, how do you feel?
How does that work for you?
How do you feel?
It's not real true business acumen.
So I was like, hey, would you consider doing this with two or three of my clients a month
and she was like, oh my God, I would love that.
So I like to light up both sides, getting the client the absolute best result, but also
too, infusing these amazing relationships that I've built over 20 years.
Yeah, that's amazing.
I guess what I'm trying to figure out is, like, did you learn this from someone like how
to navigate?
Did you work for a crisis firm before this?
How did you come up with the idea of like, I want to navigate crises? did your first case come up like that's what I'm so like like like here's
my first case I got a phone call at 11.20 at night and it was from a previous VC that I had
done a lot of work with and he said and I had often and need to be really careful with this.
I had known him many, many years,
and he was instrumental in bringing so many clients
to our consulting firm.
And every time I tried to pay him back,
Hala, a nice dinner with he and his wife,
a really great bottle of wine, he would say, Steph, listen,
you act like I'm doing you a favor.
I'm giving them to you, because you're the best firm.
Okay, you don't need to pay me back.
It's payment enough how well you take care of them.
So this went on for years and years and years.
And then I get this phone call at 11, 20 at night saying,
you wanna know how you can help me?
Let me tell you how you can help me.
And I was like, what?
What is he talking about?
What is going on?
And so basically he asked me if I would consider
looking at a very significant problem
that they had that they needed help with.
I'm a business consultant, that's what I do, right?
So I said, great, tell me about the problem.
And he said, no.
And I said, what do you mean no?
And he's like, no, he's like, I need you to fly there.
And I need for you to just meet with him
and tell me what you think.
And I'm like, you know me, like I'm a preparer,
like I want to, what?
No, what?
And he's like, I really need you to do this.
So I was like, okay, so I go fly there, zero information,
zero.
I show up and I get handed a Manila envelope.
The Manila envelope probably has, I don't know,
maybe 20 or 30 pages.
It was literally out of a book.
It was literally out of a book.
It has 20 or 30 pages in it.
And what is in there is several receipts
from a credit card company,
about eight pictures, eight still black and white pictures
of a person with other people, with other
things that weren't supposed to necessarily be in the picture.
And I'm like, okay, this is great.
What do you want me to do?
He said, fix it.
I said, what does that even mean, fix it?
I don't even know what that means.
And he goes, there's no one I know that is more connected
in more continents with more business relationships
that handles things calmly, quietly,
and is unflappable than you.
Fix it, click.
I was like, what the hell does it even fix it?
What does this mean?
And I opened the last page of this Manila envelope.
I flipped to the last page. And it was somebody who I had known for a very, very large company. And I knew that if this were to be public information,
it would be horrifying for his wife and his five children. And so I quickly needed to
understand the problem. It went from $3 million to $30 million super, super, super fast.
The problem is there's a lot of things within this Hala that, for example, he lived in two
different countries.
He had holdings in three different countries.
So it's not as easy as walking in with a white collar, a crime attorney and going, hey,
let's, you need to pay all this money back, you need to go here and you need to go, there's
interline country, massive,
financial issues that are going on. So it just so happened that I knew three different attorneys
that I loved and adored and I called and I said, hey, hey, not spend 22,000 years, but I was just
wondering if we could just sit down and have a conversation. All of them said, yes, and I said,
what would you do with something like this? And what would you do with something like this?
And what would you do with something like this?
And they all gave me great answers and great ideas.
So I came back and I was like, I think I need a legal team to like put this stuff together.
And so that's what I did.
I called them up and I said, here's the deal.
I need these things.
He said great, here you go.
It's done.
So I created contracts.
I created retainer
agreements. And I created six attorneys that were willing to document helping me through
this crisis. After that, it turned out so unbelievably well. The attorneys had a blast.
We helped somebody who we thought had done a really, really, really horrible crime that
did not a great crime.
It was bad.
It was horrible what they did, but the reasons why they did it were a little bit more explainable.
We got them all the help that they needed.
We got all the money plus 13.5% interest paid back in restitution.
We got every single person paid for their profession
double what they would have made,
and everything was completely handled within 92 days.
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That's amazing.
So basically, you had a break where somebody put you in the fire, you did a well, and then
you were like, man, I guess I can create a business out of this.
And you probably felt like this is the perfect job for me.
All my experiences prepared me for this.
Yeah, I didn't feel like any of that.
I literally was like, I didn't feel like bad at all.
I actually was like, oh my god, okay, so I got done.
And I was like, okay, yeah, done, okay.
And then he called me and he was like, so I had that feel.
And I was like, how did what feel?
That I walked into like baptism by fire.
And I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
How did that feel?
And he's like, not the point, Stephanie.
He's like, you did it.
You didn't, your heart rate didn't raise.
Everybody loved working with you and you got the best result.
And I said, great, but I believe in addressing the gap.
And like, really, how big is the need for that?
And he goes, oh, let me tell you.
And so we sat down and he ran through just what he had known in the last six months.
And not only that, but how many people had been taken advantage of, how many people had
paid a white color of crime attorney, maybe a million dollars and still gone to prison
for, you know, 10 years, or somebody who had maybe rolled on somebody else.
Like people don't understand how to move through the journey
in a thoughtful process.
We're not getting criminals off, we're not doing that.
We're just giving them a different way
to preserve their families and give back the money
or whatever it is they took from the other company.
Got it.
Super, super interesting career.
Now, we are about to wrap up the interview.
We're gonna do a quick fire segment because I wanna to talk about your courses. I want to talk about your podcast.
Very quickly, if somebody wanted to get into this space, what would you recommend them to do?
If they wanted to, if they wanted this to be their job, if they wanted to be you, if they
wanted to be a crisis management expert, what would you recommend like, interning for a company like yours?
Is that like really the way to kind of learn the ropes?
So I would say no, because I would say most,
though I don't let anybody intern for me
because the information is too sensitive.
And you have to, at the end of the day,
you have to be so discerning
with who you bring into that fold.
I would say the, if somebody wanted to do this,
first of all, they have to be able to do it for the right reasons,
Hala, the first thing is, I don't, you know,
we don't do any marketing, your clients don't go,
oh my God, call Stephanie because she just caught me
out of this crazy $100 million scheme.
So you're, it's really, you write off into the sunset
very quietly and very discerning.
We don't do public statements, we don't do all of these things.
The biggest thing that you have to do
if you wanna be in this business
is you have to thoughtfully build your network
and your relationships to be a trusted leader.
You have to hone in on your negotiation skills.
And at the end of the day, you have to offer being so still
and so unflappable to be able to really be in rooms where everybody
is just losing their crap.
So those three skills, if you can do that, call me.
Amazing.
Okay, so let's get into this quick fire section of the podcast.
So you have two courses, executive presence and scale up. So let's first talk about
executive presence. What are your top three tips to have great executive presence?
Great question. So I would say effective listening skills. Listening to understand not just
for a pause or not not hearing. So people say, hey, did you hear me?
That's not the point.
Did you listen to understand and ask clarifying questions?
That's number one.
Number two, how do you show up for meetings?
Are you early?
Are you late?
What do you offer?
Are you prepared?
And how do you know you're prepared?
How are you receiving feedback?
Are you asking your direct managers or executives or other leaders how you can show up in your
best self to be able to really hone in on those skills for what you want, not what they want
you to do.
Do you want to move up the ladder?
Do you want a promotion?
Do you want to move to another type of career showing up for you above everyone else and
just being really, really solid in who you are and what your message is?
Love that.
Love that.
Okay, so let's talk about scale up.
What are the best ways to scale your business?
First, foremost, everything is making sure that your product or your service addresses
a certain market.
And that's where everything kind of starts and stops.
Is there even demand for this?
How do you know who have you pulled, who have you spoken to?
How as you well know, we've all created things and then the market is not really there for
it anymore.
The pivot really didn't happen.
And so understanding your product or your service, understanding what gap it addresses, and then niching it down for there. If you serve everyone,
you serve no one. And this addresses that. I love that. And where can people find your course?
So for LV, it's Stephanie Malik.com-board-slash-elevated.
And for scale, it is StephanieMalik.com-board-slash-scale.
Awesome.
So we're going to stick that in the show notes, and we're going to have a special offer for
all of our listeners tuning in.
We're going to offer 10% off.
I actually help run Stephanie's podcast and her social media, and we feel like all of
our listeners
at Young & Profiting are going to really enjoy these courses are really made for young
professionals who are looking to level up. And Stephanie is a master business consultant.
She's started 11 different companies. She is a mastermind. So thank you, Hala. I really
appreciate it. You are brilliant. Okay. So let's talk about the spin-it podcast.
You have a brand new podcast in it.
You help us understand how to turn obstacles into opportunities.
I know that when we first, I had to convince you to start a podcast.
When we first got on a call, I was like, Stephanie, you need a podcast.
You are a rock star. I don't know anybody else who could talk about anything more
than you can in terms of the business world. I feel like you just got so many different
experiences. And I knew that you'd be great at podcasting. And you are a natural. I was just
on your show. I was one of the best interviews that I've ever had. We're going to replay it
on the podcast. So talk to us about what it was like learning something new. Like I know
you weren't comfortable with the idea of having a podcast.
So how did you overcome that?
So I feel like I want to have an entire show on this on just how amazing you were at so
gently pushing this.
I mean, I have to tell you, I really pissed so many people off because so many people
had begged me to do this four, five, six years ago.
And I was like, no, I don't want to be part of the noise.
Everybody has a podcast. I don't have any desire. I don't want to do it.
And I can't tell you how many people did it.
How many people came to me and told me to do this.
The way you articulate what is important to your clients,
the way you mirror things back to that client
is 1,000%.
I mean, you know, Hulla, I didn't fight you.
You said, this is what I want you to do
and I said, okay, and you were like, wait, what?
I didn't love it.
I still, it's still taking a lot of getting used to
because I wanna show up and be so present
and I wanna show up and add so much value.
It's still not just like, oh, walk in the park like you.
I am getting really amazing feedback.
I'm getting like some of the best people
that you've introduced me to sending me an email
and going, oh my God, that was literally one of the best interviews.
And I'm like, shut up, I'll put you up to that.
And they're like, I haven't talked to Holland in three months.
So it was a lot, not knowing, you know, being completely vulnerable with you.
Business is my forte.
That's what I do.
I take companies and I pivot them.
I grow them.
I make them global brands.
That's what I do.
I didn't know what I do.
I didn't know what I didn't know.
And finding someone like you, who is just,
you know, it's funny, the girls my team said,
it's literally funny because you hire her
for the same reason your clients hire you.
I have called you with the biggest flip outs
and you're like, okay, here's what we're gonna do.
There's not even a pause.
There's just like, okay, this is what we're gonna do.
And by the way, if this doesn't work,
this is what we're gonna do next.
It's just, it's such a safe place for me
to just be able to call you and freak out
that I didn't know the right questions to ask
where I feel like a little girl walking around
on my mommy's shoes.
And have you just go, Steph, I got that.
And this is what happened.
And this is what we're gonna do.
And this is how it won't happen again.
Or this is how we're gonna make it bigger.
And you've just been instrumental
in every aspect of this podcast.
And I can't thank you enough.
Oh, thank you so much, Stephanie.
I'm so proud of you guys.
It is an amazing show. I'm not just saying that, Stephanie. I'm so proud of you guys. It is an amazing show.
I'm not just saying that.
I literally, I don't, you guys,
I've had 200 episodes.
I've never bought a client on and been like,
you have to listen to her podcast,
but you have to listen to her podcast.
You will learn so much because she just has so much experience
is she's been working in this world since she was 15 years old.
Like she knows her stuff and some incredible conversations are on that podcast.
So go check out Spinit, go check out her course.
If you guys really wanna level up your business skills,
your executive presence, if you have a business
and you wanna figure out how to scale it,
make sure you check that out.
Stephanie, what is your secret to profiting in life?
My secret to profiting in life is understanding
what other people are needing and seeing if I have the skills
or the superpower to help them believe in themselves.
I love it.
And where can our listeners go to learn more about you
and everything that you do?
StephanieMalik.com and it's with a Y.
So I'll spell it.
It's STEPHYNIEP-H-Y-N-I-E.
Malik, Amazon Mary, AL-I-K.com.
All right, I'll stick that in the show notes. You can find here on Instagram. You can find
here on LinkedIn. We'll have all of her links in the show notes. Thank you so much, Stephanie.
This was an awesome conversation.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast.
What an amazing ride that conversation was.
Stephanie overcame so much emotional trauma
at such a young age with her father's death
than her getting emancipated from her mother at 15.
She was thrusted into adulthood very early on
and she realized she had to put herself
first and she had to step up to survive.
She worked three jobs during college, she put herself through school and by the age of
20 she was making $50,000 a year and her first real business related job.
She didn't let anything stop her and her setback turned to be a great opportunity in the
end.
She turned an obstacle into an opportunity,
which is everything that Stephanie is about.
She spins everything.
That's why she's so great at crisis management.
She's so great at pivoting.
Stephanie soared to the top and became a consultant
for top tier businesses and companies,
and she did it her way by using empathy
and always being an active listener to her clients.
And these skills eventually led her
to the unique career path of crisis management,
which I found super fascinating
because it's a really uncommon career path.
And she basically made up her dream job from scratch.
She took all the skills that she was good at.
She took all of her experiences.
She gave it a shot.
Somebody gave her an assignment to do crisis management.
She knocked it out of the park.
And then she started doing it for other people,
started to find out pattern,
started to understand the lay of the land.
And now she owns a huge crisis management firm.
And this really reminds me of, yeah, I did the same thing.
I was really good at podcasting.
I was really good at social media.
I knew how to do YouTube.
I knew how to do media buying from podcasts.
I knew how to do graphic design and copywriting. And I said, okay, why don't I start a marketing
agency?
I know how to do everything related to this space and I can also do a podcast production
arm.
And I did it and it turned out to be a success because I literally knew how to do everything
and I had leadership experiences from the past.
And I put all these experiences together to become
a great CEO of a marketing and podcast agency.
And I think that's why it's so important to get a lot of experience.
When you get a lot of experience, you get a lot of skills,
and then you can stack those skills together and design your dream job.
And for me, that is the biggest takeaway from this episode,
is that you can design your own dream career.
And your career path can be something that you didn't even imagine 10 years from now, 20 years from now,
after you get your experiences and you really find out what you're good at, you can design a job that is perfect for you.
And I love how Stephanie never gave up. Even at age 15, she had
no clue what she was going to do. She was pretty much homeless. And she just worked on her strengths.
She had great work ethic. She upleveled her skills. And she instills those principles in her own
children today. And not just her children, but everybody in the world. She's got courses. She does
coaching and mentoring. She is such an inspiration and a guiding example of keeping your head up
and staying strong.
If you want to learn more about harnessing your strengths and gaining confidence, go check
out episode number 104, harness your strengths with Marcus Buckingham.
Here's a clip from that episode.
That is a beautiful starting point to begin to identify for yourself where you get strength
from life.
And because strength and appetite and appetite and practice and performance and practice
are this beautiful ongoing loop, the more detailed you can be about which particular activities
do you back, those are your strengths.
You may not be good at them yet.
You may not be.
You may just be drawn to them repeatedly, but the beautiful thing is you use your life,
not someone's theoretical models, but your life to help you know what are the particular
aspects, activities, situations, context, moments, that strength in you.
Again, if you want to learn more about harnessing your strengths, go check out episode number
104 with Marcus Buckingham.
Now as always, I want to give a shout out to one of our latest Apple Podcast Reviewers,
and for those of you who don't know, Apple Podcast Reviews are the number one way to thank
us here at Young and Profiting.
And it's my favorite thing to do.
I love to read your reviews.
It makes my day every time.
So if you enjoy the podcast,
if you find value in the podcast,
if you listen every week, every month, whatever it is,
take the time to register an Apple podcast review.
We never ask for donations.
We never ask for money from our audience.
We only ask for Apple podcast reviews.
If you can borrow your friend's phone,
if you can borrow your mom's phone, if you can borrow your
mom's phone, your sister's phone, your husband's phone, whatever it is, if you don't have access
to Apple, get access, write a story review, and we will thank you for it. So this week's
shout out goes to ESNYJEP. I'm not sure how to pronounce that, a SNEEJEP. These iTunes
names are really funny, but nonetheless, the review goes
Favorite podcast as a mid 20 year old.
This podcast is always one of my favorites to listen to such great takeaways and lessons
from each and every episode.
Well, thank you so much for your amazing review and I think it's funny that at Younger
Profting, we have listeners of all ages.
I have people who are 18 years old, who love the podcast and I have people who are 65,
who love the podcast and listen each and every week.
We are really a podcast for all ages.
We are young at heart, not necessarily our age.
And I love to hear who's tuning in.
It really helps me understand who my audience is.
So if you're out there listening and again, if you find value in the show, take time to
retis an Apple podcast review.
That's the best way to thank us here at the podcast.
And the other thing that I love to see you guys do and I've seen you doing it a lot more
often, which is great, is when you guys take a screenshot of your app listening to the
end of this episode.
And then you take that picture, you upload it to your Instagram story and then tag me
at Yapp with Hala.
And then I see it. I'll reshare it. And then we can talk in the DMs.
You can tell me what you like about the show. You can tell me your favorite
episode. You can ask me a question. I love to connect with my listeners.
So please don't be shy. Take a screenshot of this app right now.
Upload it to your Instagram story. Tag me at Yap with Hala and then
let's chop it up in the DMs.
And I'm so grateful for all our listeners.
Thank you guys so much for all your support.
I am so blessed to be hosting this podcast.
You guys can also find me on LinkedIn at Hala Taha and I do want to thank the Yap team.
We have an amazing team right now where it's 68 employees strong running young and profiting podcasts in
Yap Media. I feel so thankful for everyone and just really want to thank
everybody for all their help in building this dream that we call young and
profiting. This is Hala signing off.
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