Hala Taha: How I Turned My Side Hustle into a Multi-Million-Dollar Media Business | Entrepreneurship | 7YearsofYAP

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I'll tell you how I got Matthew McConaughey.

I just thought I was going to be in corporate forever.

I was already sort of a failed entrepreneur with the blog and I had a lot of like holding on to like that failure.

Like I don't know if I can really become an entrepreneur again.

This episode is going to be one for the history books.

And we got Holla in the building.

I feel like you you have a beautiful ability to be able to change your circle and meet these influential people.

What are the steps that you take to get introductions to these influential people?

Well, our strategy for guest outreach is

sometimes people start companies and they're targeting people who have no money, and then they have to charge really low, and it's just like a race to the bottom.

I'll just give you my approach of like how I close awesome deals.

Yap gang, it's been an incredible seven years of hosting the Young and Profiting podcast.

And I couldn't even imagine the success that we have back then.

It's been seven years of never missing an episode, of building my Yap media brand, my brand.

And today, we're a top 100 podcast, we're a top 10 business and entrepreneurship podcast.

The podcast makes over a million dollars a year in sponsorships.

And aside from having a lot of listeners that are entrepreneurs, that want to be entrepreneurs, I also have a lot of podcasters that listen to me.

And I've been known as the podcast princess within the industry.

I teach a lot to podcasters on how to grow, monetize, create a podcast like Young and Profiting.

And so to mark my seven-year anniversary, I decided I would give back.

I decided that I would guest on seven other podcasts that would basically apply to have me on the show.

And the reason why they have to apply is because I'm actually replaying their episodes on my podcast to help them grow their shows.

Because one of the top ways to grow your show is to actually guest on other shows.

So instead of them guesting on my show, I'm actually going to replay the conversation in hopes that you guys go subscribe to their show if you like the show.

So the first one that we're going to play is the Forever podcast.

That's like the number four Eva podcast by Jamar Jones, who is an incredible host.

And in this conversation, I'm pulling back the curtain and giving you real actionable insights on brand building, sales, leadership, and making your vision a reality.

So I hope you guys enjoy this podcast guest appearance replay in honor of my seven-year anniversary.

If you guys are enjoying these conversations, let me know.

I'll try to make sure that each conversation is different, unique, and I'm just really incredibly happy to support another podcaster.

So, Jamar Jones, thank you for interviewing me and I wish you the best of luck.

And we got Holla in the building.

What is going on?

How you doing?

I'm doing great.

I'm so excited for our conversation.

I've been trying to get connected with you for, I think it's 10 months.

And it's funny, though, because a lot of my guests that I'm seeking to have on the podcast just takes a little bit of time.

And then usually it's like growing the relationship and just making sure.

it's legit.

So I'm super excited to like have this conversation with you.

First question I got is, do you like hip-hop?

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah.

So you had a blog site, Sorority of Hip Hop.

Why hip hop?

Well, I started my career interning at Hot 97 in New York, which is the number one hip-hop and RB station.

That's where Funk Master Flex is.

That's where Angie Martinez started out of.

And that's really how I started my career at 18, 19 years old.

I was Angie Martinez's assistant.

And I feel like I grew up at the station.

And so I would basically help her run her show.

I was essentially her associate producer and i would host parties at night host rap showcases and make my money selling rap showcase tickets and hosting those events and then i started this blog and so my world was hip-hop from like 19 to 27 my first serious boyfriend who was almost basically my husband i i was with him for 11 years was harry fraud who's a huge hip-hop producer.

I avoided my first divorce.

We never got married, but we were inseparable for 11 years.

So like my world was hip-hop.

I was a singer.

I used to sing songs.

I wouldn't say it was hip-hop, but I had elements of hip-hop in it, more pop.

But yeah, music has been a huge part of my life.

And I love hip-hop till this day.

I just celebrated my success and bought myself a hot pink Porsche.

And what am I bumping in my Porsche is hip-hop music.

Nice.

Who's the goat in hip-hop for you?

I like to stay up with what's hot now.

You know, I tend to just like the best dancey hip-hop music.

So, right now, I really like Kendrick Lamar.

I really like Sizza.

You know, Cardi B is pretty cool, but like, maybe not so much anymore, but like, I still like Scissor.

Yeah, she hasn't really come out with anything great that's been new lately, but I would say Kendrick Lamar and Siza are my top two right now.

Yeah, that Super Bowl performance by him was absolutely incredible.

So, I was a former hip-hop artist for 11 years of my life.

That's why I found that really interesting.

Open up for a lot of major acts, doing like 100 shows a year at one point until I tore my vocal cords.

Oh, wow.

And do you mold any of that past music background into what you're doing today?

I would say a lot of the skills that I learned are transferable.

So I always talk about this concept of skill stacking.

And for example, when I was at Hot 97, I learned everything about audio production, right?

I was running the dilette boards.

I was editing things live.

I had to learn how to audio edit really quickly.

I had to learn how to do research and write questions, even though I wasn't the one answering the questions.

I was even reading commercials on air.

Now a huge part of the way that I make money with sponsorships is I read commercials.

I've been reading commercials since I was 18 years old at Hot 97.

They had me reading commercials.

So a lot of those skills are transferable to what I do now.

Fast forward to the blog era.

I was running this blog for two, three years.

It was an event business.

I also had radio shows on the side.

Young and Profiting is actually like my fifth show.

I had many different music related online radio shows before I even started this podcast.

And so I learned more about promoting a show.

I learned about SEO.

I learned about graphic design because I had to build this website by myself.

I didn't have money to hire it.

I learned about recruiting teams and motivating teams.

I recruited over 50 girls to blog for me for free during this time period.

I hacked Twitter.

So I learned about social media.

This was like 2012-ish.

Social media was just starting.

So I had a lot of fundamental principles of how to hack a social media platform even before the term influencer was created.

There was no such thing as influencers.

And so I created our influence by having 50 girls, 100 girls at a time tweeting the same thing because nobody had reached if you had 5,000 followers, you had a big following back then.

So I used our combined reach to become influencers.

Right now, I'm really known for entrepreneurship and creator entrepreneurship and being popular on LinkedIn and business.

And I've totally did a 360 in terms of my brand before.

I was more of music, events, and now I'm more of business.

But the skills underpinning everything are the same.

So I wrote a book called Change Your Circle, Change Your Life.

I feel like you have this.

beautiful ability to be able to change your circle and meet these influential people to be on your podcast and continually grow your personal brand.

What are the steps that you take to get introductions to these influential people?

And how do you change your circle?

Our strategy for guest outreach has always been the same.

It's a volume game, and we just don't lower our standards.

So, essentially, when I first started this podcast, I always had big guests on the show because I said I didn't want anybody who wasn't an expert.

I didn't want anybody who had never written a book, for example.

They don't have to be a huge celebrity, but I want them to be a well-known person in their field, a thought leader.

And so, from the start, I made a list list of 100 people that I wanted and we reached out to all of 100.

And at first, two people said yes.

Dory Clark was somebody that I wanted.

And then the author of the Like Switch, Dr.

Jack Schaefer, those were my two first guests on the podcast.

Leveraging them, I got Chris Foss.

I got Stephen Kotler.

I got all these other people that I interviewed right away when I first started my podcast who are really reputable people.

And it's because I leveraged the names that I got to get the names that I wanted.

And it was just a volume game, right?

Then we just kept going at the list.

And there's some people like Gary Vee, took me five years to get on the podcast.

But that's easier as you have a bigger influence, you have more social proof, you have more reviews, you have more credibility.

It gets easier and easier to get the people that you want on the show.

Nowadays, most of the time, I could just be like, let's get him on the show.

And then three weeks later, he's on the show.

Now it's more of that, but there's bigger targets.

Like, if I wanted Elon Musk on the show, that's going to take a lot of effort.

We're going to have to email his team 20 times, 30 times.

And it's not really me meeting people in person.

It's really just about my social proof and growing my presence and credibility as a podcaster and becoming known as a podcaster that they need to have in their rotation.

So brand positioning is what I got from that.

How you position your brand, making sure the social proof is there.

So once you do get the opportunities, because you're sending off so many emails, they take a look into you, who you are, your brand, and people that you've been associated with.

And they're like, oh, yeah, it's already proven.

We got to do something.

I'll tell you how I got Matthew McConaughey.

This was four years ago.

So I wasn't even as big as I am now, but I was ranking on the charts already.

I was ranking in the education category.

And I saw that he went on some girl show that I know for a fact because I know everything about podcasts that she has no audience.

She's a LinkedIn influencer, but her podcast is not popular.

So then I showed him she's ranking here and I'm ranking 30 above her or whatever, even like 100 above her.

I don't remember what it was, where she was and where I was on the charts.

And I was like, I saw you went on this girl's show.

You should come on my show.

I have 20 times more followers than her subscribers.

And then he came on my show, you know?

It's also being scrappy and being proactive.

If somebody has a book coming out, they're more likely to be going on podcasts.

So you want to also be strategic timing wise.

And I know that.

You're amazing at being the brand voice of your company, growing your podcast, but you've really loved sales.

What made you love sales so much?

The way you were raised?

Did you just have this affinity to it where you just wanted to pick it apart and learn everything about it?

Why is sales such a love for you?

I think I've been doing sales for a long time.

I've been an entrepreneur since I was a little girl.

I was always the one who would be like selling bracelets or selling artwork, putting my cousins to work to like make stuff that I could sell.

recruiting people at school to not just create like a lemonade stand, but like a slushy stand i was always the one coming up with schemes to make up money and it was just really exciting to me so not only just selling but making offers and just being an entrepreneur in general is something that is really natural for me and you know what sales to me is human behavior and human behavior is just so interesting to me how do you can influence people to make decisions what gets people to buy and ultimately helping people because i only sell what i think will really help somebody and so if i can help someone make more money, for example, or build their personal brand, that feels really good as well.

So I just love sales.

I feel like it's one of the most interesting professions that you can have or skills that you can have, especially for entrepreneurs.

It's one of the most valuable skills that you can have.

Oh, yeah, 100%.

How is important is it as far as for the scalability and to build the right culture within your team to get to where you're going?

Because even for this podcast, just in transparency for everybody listening and watching, her team is awesome, responsive.

everything is outlined.

I can tell there's a system.

It's not ad hoc and like, yeah, let's just get her on, blah, blah, blah.

So how important is it building that culture that you built in your company and also how you built the systems to make it sustainable?

Our company is multifaceted now, right?

So I kind of think of my business as three businesses.

I have my social media and podcast agency, which is the first company that I started.

I have my podcast network where I grow and monetize 35 other shows.

People like Jenna Kutcher and Russell Brunson and Amy Porterfield and Lori Harder.

I'm responsible to get them all their sponsorships.

That's my main focus.

And then I have my brand.

So I have my personal brand, my podcast, my social channels, my courses, my mastermind, my events, my speaking, right?

So then I have my brand, maybe eventually a book, whatever it is.

So I really have three businesses and I have 60 people that work across all of these businesses.

And I have a charity project, which we don't even need to get into that.

But I've got these three businesses and they all have different processes.

And I think the main thing is that I don't try to do it alone.

And I've never tried to do it alone.

I always have a team and I'm not the type of person that is scared of asking for help and even getting people on board who are not extremely senior and I'm willing to take help no matter what.

For example, with this podcast, by episode two, I had 10 people volunteers.

They were fans that found me on LinkedIn who worked for me.

I had 10 people by episode two who worked for me on the podcast and they worked for free and they were just folks that were fans that I was like, okay, I'll teach you how to video edit.

I'll teach you how to build my website.

I'll teach you how to manage my LinkedIn.

I put them all in Slack.

I would meet with them weekly and I basically would train them.

And what they got out of it is that I would teach them skills.

We were motivated behind a mission.

At this point, nobody was getting paid.

I was working the hardest.

So they were just motivated by how hard I was working.

And they just wanted to learn from me and be a part of the team.

Right.

Now, fast forward, five, six years later, these people are managers.

These people have equity.

These people are-a lot of them.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Kate is my VP of social and one of my business partners.

She's going to have 5% of the business.

She runs my whole social agency.

From the start, I always had people people around me that were shadowing me.

So now I've been able to put people in place, one whole part of my business.

Kate runs the whole thing.

She's got 40 people under her, and I interface with her, not the 40 people anymore.

So she was with me from the ground up.

I created all the systems for the social media podcast agency.

How does the onboarding work?

What is that process?

How does the posting work and the review process for all the posting work?

How does it work in terms of team meetings?

And how often do we meet with our team?

And how do we have KPIs?

And how do we innovate?

And all these systems I've put in place.

Now she's running it.

She's a really great manager.

I wouldn't say I'm anymore.

I'm not a great manager because I don't have enough time to be a great manager.

I only have enough time to be a great manager to the managers on my team, not everybody.

Right.

So she's one example.

Then Jason,

who is my other business partner, who runs my production side of the house and helps me with the network, he's a different type of support that I receive.

That is not somebody who was an intern under me and shadowed me until they became my right hand.

He had his own company.

He was an acquisition hire.

So he had his own production agency.

He heard me on a podcast and he was like, Hey, Holla, what are you doing with Yap Media?

It's awesome.

I really think I can help you level up your production.

I have my own production team.

So I brought him on as my executive producer.

He let go of some clients.

And then eventually he did such a great job that I was like, my company is doing way better than yours.

Shut down your company and just come run

my production team.

Now he's helped me build my network.

He's my COO.

He's my CFO.

He's probably going to be the CEO one day because if I really want to take things to the next level, I can't be CEO forever.

You know, I'm more of like the visionary, the CMO, the face, like Gary Vee of his company, right?

I can't think that I can do everything.

It's not possible.

So I put him in that position and he's able to run with it and he's doing an excellent job.

And so it's about knowing the things that you lack.

Like I'm not great at finances.

I'm amazing at sales and offers.

Let me focus on the sales and the offers.

Let me focus on the sales, marketing, and the offers.

And let me just get the best possible help for everything else.

The last thing I'll say is that we're not afraid of international talent.

I've got about only probably, I had more U.S., but we keep getting less and less U.S.

hires.

We probably only have 11 U.S.

hires, including me and Kate and Jason, who are the business partners of Yap Media, and maybe a handful of other U.S.

folks.

And we're heavily invested in arbitraging talent overseas.

And we find that they're better talent.

So we maybe have 10 employees in Nigeria, which is like a huge focus of ours is getting Nigerian talent because they're so smart.

They're so loyal.

They can work U.S.

hours.

And we've seen incredible success with them.

India, Philippines, we even got Algeria and things like that.

So we are really focused on international talent.

And that is helping us because we're more profitable than a lot of the other networks and social agencies because we're focused on U.S.

talent.

And our team is happier.

They're hungrier.

They're more resourceful.

We just have a better culture because people are more thankful for their job at our company.

We've got an awesome culture at Yap Media.

I don't know if you want me to go deeper on certain things.

No, I mean, honestly, you answered that perfectly.

I do want to highlight one thing, though.

You had mentioned that you're maybe not the best manager, but your weight on how you lead, so even having volunteers, 10 volunteers in the beginning, but to give them the vision of where this is going to go, they believed in you and the vision enough to volunteer and to still be there is crazy.

That told me for a little.

I'm like, they're still there?

Not everyone, but there was about 20 people for two years who worked for free for me.

And I would say about eight of them are still with us.

And it was the most engaging.

ones are still there.

Wow.

So you really know how to cast a vision for people to really see where this thing is going to go.

When I first started it, they were like, What do you imagine?

We're going to be the number one podcast network.

I didn't say self-improvement.

I didn't think that clearly, but I was like, We're going to be the biggest podcast network.

That is crazy.

And this is good, too, for everybody listening.

You don't have to always hire where you're at.

Even at Forever Media, we have talent all over the place, too.

And there was a time when I had 15 people that everybody was in-house, same place.

And I quickly learned, hey, there's other ways to hire.

You don't necessarily need to have people right there in the big fancy office and all that stuff.

You can have great talent from all over the place.

So that's definitely some golden nuggets for people.

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As you're growing and scaling, who was your first actual hire then?

So you had 10 volunteers.

Who was the first person you hired?

Her name was Kennedy.

She doesn't work at the company anymore.

Actually, a funny story is that I had my first full-time hire before I quit my full-time job.

Yeah.

Wow.

I started this company as a side hustle, yeah, media.

So I started the podcast two years.

Then I started my social media agency and that took off right away.

Our second client was a billionaire who paid us $30,000 a month.

Was that luck?

Was that a little bit of luck, hustle, and grit?

I mean, it was a little bit of luck, but

again and again and again, where I got like the CEO of Hintwater then paid me 27K a month.

And then the CEO of 100 got junk, similar like big size deal, right?

So I got like three big ones in a row.

And then suddenly I was like, damn, I'm making like a hundred grand a month and I'm still working at Disney

and I'm running this off interns and people from the Philippines.

And I was like, okay, like we're making money.

As soon as I got the first one, I hired Kennedy as the full-time social media manager.

Kate was still working at her full-time job, who's one of my business partners.

Then I hired her next.

I don't even know when I officially became an employee.

I don't remember the timeline of that.

And you said 2020 is when it really boomed for your company.

What do you feel like was that turning point of people reaching out?

Everybody was asking me at the end of my show for years.

So I had grown LinkedIn first.

So I was a LinkedIn influencer from the start.

Within six months of starting my podcast, I was one of the top LinkedIn influencers.

I would say about a year and a half later, two years into podcasting, I became a bigger podcaster.

I got popular on Castbox.

I became known as one of the top podcasters on LinkedIn.

I would always post my content on LinkedIn.

I still wasn't that big on Instagram or YouTube or any other channels.

It was really just a biggest podcaster on LinkedIn.

And I had some apps that I was popular on, and I became popular on podcasts.

Well, everybody used to always ask me, how did you grow your podcast?

How did you grow this LinkedIn channel?

And it would be the guests that would come on my show.

And all the guests, like I told you guys already, they were all successful, really popular authors, entrepreneurs.

I never had crappy guests, right?

So, the guests came on, and they all had a lot of money.

And they would always ask me at the end of my show, How did you do this?

How did you grow your LinkedIn?

How'd you do your podcast?

Can you do this for me?

And podcasting and stuff was still like pretty new.

There wasn't podcast agencies.

There was definitely social media agencies, but maybe not so many LinkedIn ones.

And I was doing such a great job.

And part of it was because I had this machine.

I had 20 people working for me.

So we had the best videos, we had the best content.

We were so professional.

The team that you liaisoned with for guest outreach, same team that was running me back then, right?

So that's why they're so polished, they're so awesome.

And so they just had such a great experience.

And I would always say,

oh, sorry, this is just a hobby.

I have a full-time job at Disney.

I get paid a lot.

This is just for fun.

This is just a hobby.

Because even though I said I wanted to be a podcast network, I truly didn't believe it.

In my heart, I was like, this is just a hobby.

This is for me to get my passion out.

I wasn't ready really to do anything else with it and i just thought i was going to be in corporate forever i was already sort of a failed entrepreneur with the blog and i had a lot of holding on to like that failure like i don't know if i can really become an entrepreneur again i didn't know what the path was yet i didn't really see the path clearly so then when covet hit i ended up having a lot of time right we started working from home and These guests would continue to ask me for these services until one time this, have you ever heard of Heather Monaghan?

uh yeah name sounds familiar yeah he's like a huge linkedin influencer she already had like maybe a hundred thousand followers she would not leave me alone she was like every video holla you need to teach me how to do these videos holla we need to talk she came on my show and she would ask and i told her no i can't help you and then i wanted her to be my mentor and i was like okay she's somebody who i want to be in 10 years she's the speaker she's this huge influencer everybody knows her and so i was like hey i'll teach you how to do these videos on Saturdays.

And so I set up all this time on her calendar every Saturday for me to like train her.

The first Saturday that we met, I like took her through, okay, this is our Slack channel.

These are our templates.

This is how you do this.

This is

software.

I took her through all these processes.

And she's like, Colla, I just had a call with Gary Vee's team.

I want to work with you.

I want to be your first client.

You hate your job at Disney because I've been talking to her on the phone and stuff.

So she knew that I didn't like my job.

She's like, you need to just take the leap.

I want to be your first client.

What do you say?

I was like, okay, cool.

She didn't pay me a lot.

She paid me like a thousand dollars a month.

So I couldn't quit my job or something, but I started making her video.

So good.

So I got on this guy, Jason Waller.

He was the CEO of the fastest growing private solar company, invites me on his podcast.

So I would get invited on podcasts.

At the end of the show, he was like, Hey, I see you do LinkedIn podcasts.

Can you do this for me?

This guy's a billionaire.

For the first time ever, I was like, Yes, I can.

I was like, I have an agency.

I can do this for you.

So I had no logo.

I had no website.

I had no name of my company.

I was really good at making PowerPoints.

I was really good at graphic design.

I was really good at presenting.

So, I created a PowerPoint.

And I remember talking with one of my interns at the time, he was my first business partner, Tim.

And I was like, okay, let's do LinkedIn 3K, Instagram 3K, podcast 3K.

And he's like, he's a billionaire.

Let's just say 10K each service.

And I was like,

okay.

So I put together this presentation and I just go in with confidence, me and Tim on the call with Jason, go through the deck.

Again, no website, no logo, no nothing, just the social proof of what I've built myself.

And I go through it and I'm like, all right, it's 30K months.

And he's like, let's do it.

And I'm like, wow.

What were you thinking after that?

We were like, we got to find a contract.

You got to find this, that.

And we went online, we found a business bank account.

Yeah.

We needed all of them.

Suddenly, I had to form a company so we did it and it was our first client and then again i told you we got client after client after client and everything just scaled so so quickly because i had all this built up demand from just building my brand for so long and never selling to anyone so suddenly everybody was like oh man i want to sign up with holla and COVID hit anybody who had money knew that they had to be online so if they weren't online they were looking for the right person and i was seen i guess maybe as this golden child that that like knew

how to blow up LinkedIn and podcasts.

And so I got all the clients and I did a really, really great job for them too.

I really crushed it for all of my clients.

Oh my God, there's so much to unpack there.

And when you were first working with the influencer that you wanted to have be a mentor, you did that for free, right?

Those Saturdays?

I just totally did that for free.

That's how I get all my mentors doing free work for people.

I got Jordan Arbinger to be my mentor.

That's amazing.

Please rewind that, that, that story that she just told, because first you got to present value to people.

People oftentimes, because I have this knack of being able to change my circle again and again, and to meet influential people and to be connected.

And then they're like, dude, Jamar, how are you doing all this stuff?

First, it's about providing value up front.

And it's not always money all the time.

Sometimes it is, you might have something that can.

be beneficial to somebody else.

And that was in the case of for you.

But also at the same time, you are building your brand on LinkedIn and growing that and treating yourself as you were a client.

And I think every business, especially small business, need to hear that because there's a lot of social media agencies out there.

And I'm sure you know where I'm going with this, that their socials suck.

They're not good, but they're like, oh, but I can do it for you.

But why are you not doing it for yourself?

You should definitely be your first client.

And then the people that you want to get in front of definitely offer your time and resources to that person.

And then to to also have confidence enough to just charge what you felt that was a good price.

Like

here's the thing.

Like I was lowballing, but I had every right to charge that high because I did have the systems.

Remember, I had 20 volunteers.

Heather's whole argument was you have a company.

She's like shaking me like, you have a company, like dumbass, you know, like you have a company.

So I had a great foundation.

And to your point, we only did stuff that we already knew worked for me.

So we figured out LinkedIn.

We started doing it as a service.

We figured out podcasts.

We started doing it as a service.

We figured out sponsorships.

We started a network, right?

So it's like we only did the stuff that we knew already worked for me.

And the other thing to know is that when you build a brand, so I had built an awesome brand.

And that's what enabled me to charge higher.

And then the last thing I'll say is that it is your choice who you sell to.

I chose to sell to these people that were wealthy and who had their own companies and who could afford my services.

And I chose a route that is more like white glove, catered towards somebody who doesn't have a lot of time, all done for you, no stone unturned.

You can call me on speed dial type of a relationship.

And I chose my target client and I stuck with that, right?

Sometimes people start companies and they're targeting people who have no money and then they have to target really low and it's just a race to the bottom.

So I purposely tried to pick a really high level client with a high level service and went about it that way.

Oh, that's amazing.

So can I ask just about LinkedIn?

Cause you were able to build that and continually build that.

Is there a certain secret sauce to LinkedIn, in your opinion?

Is it just consistency and making sure that your brand is high quality?

What is it to you that for the reason why you were able to grow on LinkedIn so fast?

I think you hit the nail on the head where consistency plays a lot to it because you got to put your reps in.

You got to figure out what's working, what's not working.

The reason why I was able to hack the LinkedIn algorithm is because I was posting every day and I did it myself at first.

You can hire a team like mine where you know that they know what they're doing, right?

But most people don't have that opportunity when you're just starting out.

You've got to post yourself.

So hand post, understand

what the patterns are in terms of how you're posting.

And on LinkedIn specifically, it's not really what you're posting.

Now, keywords are more and more important and things like that, but it's more about how you're posting.

What are the ways that you're publishing?

What are you doing in the first 90 minutes that you're publishing?

How are you getting engagement on your posts?

How are you DMing people so that you can trigger the algorithm so they see your content?

So, there's so many different rules on LinkedIn in terms of how you publish and engage that you need to be aware of.

So, the features using videos versus graphics versus versus polls, it matters, but really not so much.

I'll try to break it down as simply as I can.

Number one,

you've got to train the algorithm on what you're an expert on.

And that goes with all social media platforms.

We live in a world where it went from friend graph algorithms to now it's went to interest graph algorithms.

So, the friend graph algorithm was all about having as many followers as possible.

People just see the most recent content or the most engaging content, the most viral content.

Fast forward to today, the TikTokification of social media, as Gary Vee says.

Now it's all about getting you exactly what you want when you're on, having the most relevant topics.

It's not about having a million followers.

You could have zero followers and go viral.

It's not even about having the most viral content.

It's about the most engaged content in your niche that gets sent to the user who's most interested in that content.

And this happens in real time.

You guys know when you're scrolling on reels, if you like look at a dance video for too long, suddenly your next three videos are dance videos, right?

So this is all happening instantly.

And it's enabling people who don't even have a lot of followers to crush it on social media.

So all social media platforms are moving towards that direction.

So on LinkedIn, what that means is you need to train the algorithm on what you're an expert on.

So that means having keywords in your profile that match the keywords in your post.

So if I talk about podcasts and I want to teach people about podcasts, I better have podcasts in my title, in my bio, in my job descriptions, keywords related to podcasting or social media or whatever the keyword cloud I want to be recognized for as an expert on on LinkedIn.

And then I want to have posts that also talk about that content.

And then I want to have really meaningful content that gets engagement, that gets high viral action.

So long comments or shares, so that the algorithm knows that I get engagement on this content and they send it to more users who want to see content like that.

And there's certain things that you need to understand in terms of what to post.

Like I mentioned, being an an expert and then having keywords in your posts that line up to your expertise.

That's number one.

And then number two is the publishing and engagement strategies.

So in the first 90 minutes on LinkedIn, it's really important to have a velocity of engagement.

So that means you need to be an active member of the community.

You need to be DMing your first connections.

When you DM somebody and they DM you back, they're 85% more likely to see your content the next time they log on.

So you need to reinvigorate your first connections all the time so they see your stuff so that when you post things up, they reciprocate, they comment, they like, they actually see your content.

You need to make sure that people who follow you actually want the content that you have or else when that first 90 minutes is up and people see your content and they don't engage, you're going to get panelized for that.

You need a velocity of engagement when you first post.

You can even join engagement pods, which are not against terms of service to try to get likes and comments from your first connections as soon as you post.

You need to be a good member of the community and post on other people's stuff so that you're just part of this world where you guys are feeding each other.

So it's really important to know how to publish and you can artificially do that through engagement pods, not automation.

I'm not talking about bots.

I'm talking about real people, but you can set yourself up for success strategically being in an engagement pod.

And also just being a good member of the community is going to help you get more traction.

So many.

actionable steps that you just gave to grow on LinkedIn.

And most of the times it's just people just being consistent first.

I always tell people, just start.

Just get on a good cadence and then you can start to be a scientist about it and go down there.

But yes, to do all those things, that's how you're going to grow fast and grow quickly and get into the algorithm.

And who told you that content was important?

Why was that such a priority for you when you started to hone that in, even for yourself?

To be honest, my main goal was always just to help people.

I didn't even have a monetary goal, which is why when people asked me for me to be their agency, I said no all the time.

Because all I wanted to do, I was happy.

I was just happy just growing this movement and having this podcast and interviewing awesome people and sharing the information and just being positive and helping other people.

That's what really motivated me.

What motivates me is building a team and helping my team and then helping other people online.

And so for me, it was all about just having positivity.

Maybe like deep down inside, I wanted to like have a brand and I've always been very outspoken and like to be the lead in the play and stuff like that so I always like to be like

center stage that's who I am naturally but it wasn't what I was thinking about I was thinking about helping people

there was like a big void in helping young people in business at the time it was really innovative for me to come out with a business podcast as like a young lady in 2018.

Now everybody has a podcast, but when I did it, it was really new.

People were like, what are you doing?

What is this?

You know, and that in itself of just helping people and coming out with this new concept of podcasts was really cool and just motivated me itself.

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Yeah, fam, I have to say, one of the coolest parts of my career is that it it takes me all over the world.

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And these Airbnbs always make me feel at home.

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And that actually inspired me to start hosting myself.

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I know a lot of us are entrepreneurs, side hustlers.

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I want to do it.

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So on the sales side of your business, what's one killer closing line that you can share with us?

Like when you close these big sponsorships or brand deals, maybe big agency accounts, what's one line that really, or maybe it could be a couple of lines, but something that's like going to really close somebody to move forward for business?

I'll just give you my approach of how I close awesome deals.

Perfect.

It's being the best and the most knowledgeable about what I'm talking about.

So let's say it's me trying to close an agency lead and they want to do LinkedIn and podcasts.

I'm going to go over our services, but throughout the whole conversation, I'm going to be dropping gem after gem after gem of this is the why we do our strategy.

This is why it works.

Here's the data behind it.

Here's a case study of how we 3x somebody's impressions on social media.

and i'm just like where they leave it being like there's no way that i could replicate what this girl has built i want to work with her so like most of my sales success is just off the strength of me being so much more knowledgeable and just knocking the socks off people in terms of their being impressed with my knowledge and i feel like that is my core strategy the other strategy that i have is just making sure that in the beginning of the conversation.

So I always have really nice sales decks.

And in the beginning of the conversation, before I even put up a presentation, I'm always trying to understand like their core problem.

I'm trying to filter out, are they even a good fit for me?

And I'm not afraid to actually say, you're not a good fit for us, but I know so-and-so who is.

Because I always want my reputation to be killer and I want to always do the best job.

So I don't want to actually have somebody who can't afford my services or who doesn't have an offer yet for my social agency and so on.

So I'm like, okay, like, what is the problem?

What wasn't working before?

Okay.

What are you hoping to achieve now?

What are your goals?

How do you make money?

Where are you driving RY?

And this is so important to do on a sales call before you just jump into your solution.

Because if you don't make it about them from the beginning, the whole time they're going to be like, why does this person think they can help me?

They didn't even ask me about my business.

People want to talk about themselves, right?

Yeah.

And they want to make sure that you understand their problem and you know exactly how to solve it.

So once I know these are all their problems, this is what didn't work before.

This is how they make money.

Now I can use all of that information and customize the way that I go over this presentation in a way that addresses every single concern that they had organically throughout this presentation, as if this is what I was going to say the whole time anyway.

But I tailor the things that I hone in on based on the problems that they had or the things that they want to solve.

So good.

Another thing is that we tend to

scare them on the price a little bit.

So I tell them up front on my discovery call conversations, we don't tell them the price on the call.

If I feel like I know them and they've got money and it's not a big deal, I'll be like, yeah, it's 10K a month for LinkedIn.

If you want to bundle, we have to like sit and price it.

But most of the time, we're like, I just want to warn you, we're really expensive.

We're the best.

I stand up a dedicated team.

You're going to have five people.

That's your extended marketing team.

We're not cheap.

I'm just warning you.

But anyway, we're going to go and try to give you the best pricing.

You wanted all these different things.

There's some cost savings involved from bundling these services.

We'll get back to you on the price, blah, blah, blah.

Then I email them the price and I basically scare them so that they're thinking it's worse than it's even going to be.

And then they're like level set once they actually get the price.

So that's something that we do is that we always make sure that they know that we're expensive before we give them the price.

That way they're not shocked.

And if anything, they're less shocked.

They're expecting worse.

So that's one thing.

And then the other thing is sometimes you have these calls that go amazing and people are like, yep, ready to sign.

even if the price ready to sign, ready to go, blah, blah, blah.

And then they ghost you.

Yeah.

It's happened to everybody.

Now, my favorite thing to do is, and Chris Voss taught me this, is to just approach them with like a no-oriented question.

There's a couple of things I want to talk to you guys about closing.

So you never want to sound needy.

So something that I do is we always have one spot left.

We always have a wait list.

Even if we don't, we always have a wait list.

We always have one spot left.

We have availability starting starting in two weeks.

I never want anybody to feel like I'm desperate because I'm not.

I'm not desperate for any sort of client, right?

So never, ever want to sound desperate.

Like you've got so many spots you want to sign right now.

Everything can be, yeah, whatever.

Take your time.

With any sort of contract that gets sent out, you want to call it an agreement.

So you don't want anybody to get scared of the word contract.

You want to call it an agreement.

Let's say you send your agreement.

and you give it an expiration date.

Hey, we've got a lot of clients.

Just FYI.

If you don't sign by this date, it expires.

Every agreement needs to have an expiration date.

A lot of people don't do that, right?

So you want to have an expiration date so they feel like there's some sort of timeline.

But let's say they ghost you in the process that's two days before it's expiring.

You want to just reach out with a note-oriented question like, hey, hey, what's up?

Hope you're well.

Are you no longer interested in LinkedIn services?

Just flat out ask them.

And not like, I just want to say this, and this is why we're so good.

And this is what, no.

Hey, I just want to ask, are you no longer interested in linking services?

I need to know to figure out what how to proceed with other people on queue or just are you no longer interested what's going to happen is they're going to email you immediately and be like oh no i'm so sorry i just got back up with blah blah blah i'll get back to you here there's just delay they're going to tell you what's blocking them it casts them off guard because instead of saying yes they're saying oh no

right i'm not and another thing is is linkedin no longer part of your strategy Or are you no longer looking to grow XYZ's personal brand?

And they're going to be like, no, of course we want to grow his personal brand.

And then this is why we're delayed.

So it just like kickstarts the conversation again.

So like, that's a really great way to get the conversation going.

It's like you're the queen of positioning.

Everything that you're talking about is how you're positioning.

And you just have this innate confidence within you that I think a lot of people struggle with.

You started at the beginning of this podcast with saying like, if you believe in your services, that you really actually can help people, well, then selling is easy because you know that you can help somebody.

If you're still trying to figure it out, then it's going to be really hard for you to sell people.

And it's going to be hard to be confident in that.

I mean, the position that you had from the type of people on your podcast to how you're selling to how you position your agency, to how you position your brand, everything is how you position yourself.

I think it's such a really good takeaway.

for people because people are just doing stuff, you know, like,

and they don't think about like, well, what's my line in the sand?

What am I not okay with?

Who do I not want to work with?

They need to ask these questions.

And I think this is a great reminder.

And just want to say this really quick for all the audience.

Holla has tons of webinars and stuff for free on her YouTube page.

Tons.

So you guys can go binge watch.

She goes really deep into this stuff.

So what's next for you?

I know the podcast network is a really big focus.

What's your next big position play?

Like, what are you doing next?

i'm really focused on growing my network so i have the yap media podcast network we're the number one business and self-improvement podcast network i have about 35 shows and my main thing is recruiting as big podcasters as i can i just moved out to austin so i'm officially in austin you're in new york Yeah, I moved to Austin.

Yeah, so I moved.

Where are you based?

I'm in Richmond.

I was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Now I'm in Richmond.

I have now met in the past three days, like five to six different people from Austin now that live in Austin.

Like, I got to go to Austin.

I got to go.

I love Austin.

So I just moved out here in February.

We're building like a creator compound.

So essentially, a creator house and studios.

I'm in like a temporary studio right now.

So we're building like studios and like a headquarters.

Basically, I'll live on one side.

The other side will be like a creator house and studios.

So very excited about that.

And it will help us recruit podcasters and things like that.

So, yeah, that's my main focus.

I got to focus.

That's the name of the game.

I can't spread myself thin.

I already have a lot going on.

There even might be an avenue where I shut down parts of my business so that I can laser focus on everything I need to do with my podcast and my network.

Or as I was saying before, maybe I step down as CEO so that I can focus on what I need to focus on.

Perhaps a book in the future.

Everybody keeps asking me to write a book, but again, no time yet to do that.

I feel like it's not on the roadmap quite yet.

How often are you speaking?

Are you doing a lot of speaking as well?

I'm speaking pretty often.

The last one that I did was I spoke at Funnel Hacking Live, which was awesome.

So Tony Robbins, that's Russell Brunson's event.

Yep.

It was like 6,000, 7,000 people.

So that was incredible.

I did it all about podcast monetization.

Oh, that's awesome.

That's awesome.

So I always close out the podcast with asking this, just a fun question.

What's your top five favorite movies of all time?

Oh, God, I'm the worst at this.

Really?

I have this question.

Are you not really an avid movie watcher like that?

So I love movies, but I am not good at remembering names for the life of me.

I'm so bad at this kind of stuff.

Like, I'm really bad at this stuff.

I'll try to do it.

Like, Wedding Singer, 10 Things.

All of them are going to be old because I only remember old movie names.

10 Things I Hate About You,

Monthly in the Dollhouse.

These are all like old movies from when I was like 13.

Fear, right?

I only remember the old movies.

I can't remember it.

I'm terrible.

It's so funny.

I asked the one question that you're like, I don't remember movies.

I watch movies as dates.

Like, this is one lesson that I want to teach your listeners because you were saying positioning, all this stuff.

I just talked to Cal Newport, who's like this big productivity guru.

And his main thing, and I totally aligned to it, is that you need to understand that to gain expertise and success, it's slow.

I've been in this world now for like 15 plus years doing the same thing, social media broadcasting, social media broadcasting.

And different, it's evolved, right?

It was radio, then online radio, then it was blog, then it was the podcast, then it was the LinkedIn, but it's all the same shit, right?

I was doing the same thing every day, obsessed with it every day, putting in work, focus, putting in work, focus, focus, putting in work, focus, training other people.

So I learned it even better because I'm training other people and just getting the reps, getting the reps.

And I focused on this skill that now I have.

And it was because I said no to other things like watching a million movies or watching every TV show.

Or I watch movies as a date and I don't do it by myself.

I have been in Austin for five months.

I don't even know how to turn the TV on in our Airbnb.

I never turn it on.

Wow.

I have have relationships.

I love to work out and I have a company and I have a podcast.

I don't have time to, you've got to say no to something if you want to be the best in the world at something.

And I consider myself to be the best in the world at knowing how to grow and monetize podcasts and LinkedIn as well, knowing how to rock LinkedIn.

Those are the two things that I'm the best in the world at, I feel like are top 10 in the world.

If you want to be in the best in the world, you've got to say no to a lot of things.

And so for me, I don't want to memorize actors and actresses and movies.

I don't give a about that right that's not going to make me money that's not going to grow my team that's not going to get me to 100 million dollars in revenue right so i'm sorry i don't have an answer to your question

13 year old holla

no it's fantastic i kind of had the same thing because you know with movies i do remember the name but I don't know a lot of actors.

So like when people start, if I'm in social circles and they start talking about movies and actors, I can only go so far in the conversation that I'm kind of like.

Industry, if you're a movie producer, director, or actor, sure, know everything about that.

But if you're not, what are you wasting your time for learning about people who don't give a shit about you?

Oh, I love that.

Where can people get connected to you?

How can they reach out?

So if you want to listen to the podcast, I highly recommend it.

I love my podcast so much.

It's my baby.

So Young and Profiting on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to the show or wherever you listen to your podcast, you can find us.

If you want to find out about LinkedIn, I have a masterclass that we're doing.

I only do it one time a year now, a live one.

If you want to sign up for that, you can go to yapmedia.com/slash course.

I'm also releasing a new podcast course that I've never, I've never done that before.

I'm releasing a growth and monetization course, hopefully in like August or September.

So working on that now.

So excited about that.

Yapmedia.com for all the agency stuff.

And yeah, you can find me pretty easily, I think.

Oh, that's sweet.

Thank you so much for your time.

Everybody listening, watching, please like, comment, subscribe to the podcast.

This podcast has been fantastic.

I think you've helped a lot of people.

People need to replay this over and over, and then they need to hop to your YouTube, and they need to go binge-watch.

You are very articulate about how you do things.

I hope that this podcast helps people appreciate that a little bit more about how you're positioning and how you're doing everything.

There's a science to it, and I can already see it.

This is awesome.

Thank you.

And everybody, don't forget if you can change your circle, you can change your life.

Till the next episode, we're out.

Peace.

All right, guys, as we wrap up, I want to thank you again for tuning into Young and Profiting Podcast the past seven years.

Whether you're an old listener that has been listening all these years or somebody who just found the show recently, which there's actually a lot of you, I really appreciate it.

Something that we're really focused on in year seven is growing our video presence.

So we're on Spotify video.

We're really doubling down on YouTube.

I have almost 60,000 subscribers on YouTube.

So make sure sure you guys go subscribe to me on YouTube.

That would be a great seven-year anniversary present.

Well, you guys, I really am blessed to be the host of this podcast.

I couldn't imagine a more fun career.

And I hope that I was able to support you, Jamar, in this episode.

I hope that you grow your podcast, you achieve all your dreams.

And to everybody tuning in, I hope you achieve your dreams too.

This is your host, Halataha, aka the podcast princess, signing off.