Hala Taha: Transform Career Setbacks into Business Success | Entrepreneurship | 7 Years of YAP

This is going to go really deep, but we might be the last generation that is able to really live our own purpose.

AI is going to basically automate almost every single job that we can think of.

Hala Taha, she's the CEO of Yap Media and the top 100 global host of the Young and Profiting Podcast.

She's known as the podcast princess.

She's been featured on the cover of Podcast magazine and 40 Under 40.

When I was focused at Hot 97, I was completely absorbed with Hot 97.

I was Hala from Hot 97.

That was my identity.

identity.

I got fired on a Thursday.

By Sunday, I was working in on a new idea.

I started my podcast as a side hustle.

Many people didn't look at LinkedIn as a place to monetize.

What was it about the network that had you embrace it so early on?

I focused on LinkedIn for two reasons.

One is

start building your personal brand.

My whole business is built off the back of me having a personal brand.

Authenticity and trust is huge when it comes to building any sort of brand.

And the way that you do that is

Young and Profiters.

I once gave up everything to chase my dream job in radio.

I worked for free.

I dropped out of college and I showed up every single day with blind faith and worked my very hardest, only to be shown the boot without a word.

I got fired from my unpaid job, but that setback sparked my comeback.

To celebrate seven years of building Young and Profiting from the ground up, I'm joining seven of my biggest podcast fans on their own podcasts.

And today I'm honored to be a guest on the Lonely Office podcast hosted by Matt, Aaron, and Leah.

In this episode, I open up about rejection, resilience, and I pull the curtain back on how I built Yap Media.

I also share how I turned unexpected setbacks into defining moments while building an unshakable personal brand.

If you're stuck, underestimated, or quietly dreaming big, this episode is one you won't want to miss because the dream job you might be chasing might just be the one you build for yourself.

Here's my conversation with the Lonely Office podcast.

Holla had been working at the radio station for three years, not employed, working.

No badge, no paycheck, no health insurance, just vibes.

And she had blind faith that if she kept showing up, they'd eventually put her on the air, or at least the payroll.

She did everything.

She booked guests.

She wrote scripts.

She ran social, even covered for no shows.

At one point, she was basically producing the show, but she's doing all of this for free.

Her friends were like, hey, wait, you work every day, but wait a second, you don't get paid?

Is this a radio gig?

Is this really worth it?

Is this just some sort of long con game that you're a part of?

But still, she kept going because it was the dream, right?

Media, New York, access.

She thought that if she stayed hungry long enough, it would happen.

Then one day, she finally asked nicely, professionally, hey, I've been here for a while.

Do you think we could talk about getting paid?

That's reasonable.

Three years.

Is this crazy?

No, it's reasonable.

By the way, hold on one second.

Why are we even having to ask this?

I'm back.

Okay, here's what's wild.

The next day, all of a sudden, there's nothing.

No exit interview, no thank you, just a quiet boot from the building she had once tiptoed into like it was holy ground.

And that's when Hala learned the first rule of chasing your dream job was this.

Never assume the dream wants you back.

This is a unique intro in that we actually have the protagonist of the story with us today.

Hala Taha is not a made-up name.

You probably know her.

She's the podcast princess.

We adapted this based on the narrative that we've learned about her on her podcast and her podcast empire.

Let me actually do introductions first.

I'm Aaron Calafato.

You can hear me telling seven-minute stories all over the podcast sphere.

And then we have Leia Ova, side quest specialist.

What is that all about?

I'm marketing, I'm TikTok, I'm momming, I'm just, you know, doing a little bit of everything.

Then we have Matt Sunbully, dad and entrepreneur.

We have on the show with us today, Hala Taha.

She's the CEO of Yap Media and the top 100 global host of the Young and Profiting Podcast, which we've listened to.

Are fans of the show.

She's been featured on the cover of Podcast Magazine and 40 Under 40.

Hala, welcome to The Lonely Office.

I'm so excited to be here.

Thank you guys so much for having me.

Thanks for joining us, Hala.

I'm excited for this one.

It's rare that we actually get the opening hero of our story protagonist to join us for the conversation.

So this is going to be a fun one.

So before we get into the topics, Holly, is the story that we led with 80%

on point?

Was I way off?

Is this fake news?

No, you were totally on point.

That really happened to me.

You missed a couple of things that make it even worse.

Like I dropped out of college to work for free for the radio station.

I went back to school, but I was a college dropout for that opportunity.

Another thing that you left out is that a paid job opened up for the producer role.

And instead of giving me the job, they wanted me to train somebody how to be the producer.

No.

And it was a boy that was like just a couple years older than me.

But however, I've learned in my wiser age to always reframe my past in a positive way.

And when I look back at that moment, I always try to think everything happens for a reason.

And I got redirected.

Now I have my own podcast and everything happened so beautifully.

And while I was bitter.

for getting basically blackballed.

They not only fired me, they told me that all my mentors were no longer allowed allowed to speak to me anymore.

Just because you asked to be paid?

Yeah.

Jeez.

So I had all the DJs who I used to work for at night and I used to make money hosting parties and showcases.

They were like my mentors, my best friends.

My whole life revolved around the station.

They were like, sorry, Holla.

Angie says we can't talk to you anymore.

You can't come to the parties anymore.

We have to disassociate or our jobs are at risk.

And I basically got blackballed.

So not only got fired, I got blackballed and literally did nothing wrong.

you don't ask somebody to come every day and work for you if they suck it was maybe not illegal but like kind of illegal right and maybe they got worried and they just wanted to cut me off so i didn't stay in my place basically i just want to say of course the story ends where the entire radio industry just collapses and

the industry you choose podcasting just takes it over so some crazy karma there for them and by the way that story you mentioned about you having to educate or train the new hire.

Sounds familiar.

That's a classic class door post.

We probably had 10 versions of that by professionals hosting cross-class about exactly that.

So not a unique phenomenon at all, apparently.

It happens a lot across different industries.

Yeah.

The way it worked is I was supposed to just shut my mouth and work for free for five years so I could get a 3 a.m.

slot on the radio.

That's what I was supposed to do.

Well, it's interesting, Leia.

Remember when we talked to Adam Grant last episode?

And one of the things that I talk about all the time, and we've talked about is that work isn't your family.

And a lot of employers, it talks about family and there's family elements, but there's a thing that's happening in narrative.

But as you know, firsthand, at the end of the day, when it comes down to it, family doesn't treat each other that way.

And whether it was good or bad, otherwise, that's not how family treats each other.

Let me actually read a post here real quick, Holla, and then I want to dive into our first topic.

This is a post that is a little bit parallel, and you'll see where I'm going with this.

So it was a Glassdoor post.

Someone says, I worked in toxic environments where HR didn't exist or worse, was married to the boss.

Yikes.

In one job, I was pressured to drink an energy drink just to prove I was a team player.

We know this thread, right?

Yes, I remember this.

The monster energy drink thread.

I love this thread.

In another, I couldn't escape a CEO's intimidation because her husband, the COO, was the only authority figure.

This goes on and on and on.

I'm going to stop there.

My point is, this is a totally totally radical story here, but at the same time, Holla, there is this theme, and you had a realization when you had a dream job, so to speak, but then when that dream job ejects you.

Did you have anything even similar?

Was there any sort of toxicity or anything like that within where you worked?

Or was it more or less what you would describe, which is you're going in every day after all of this, being booted out?

And we'll get to the success and stuff later, but we're looking for that inception story.

And the conformity, right?

Because they always say in the radio, you got to put in the time.

And it's almost like they set up these expectations that you had to follow according to their playbook and logic, but it doesn't really make much sense by any other fair standards.

I mean, there was a lot of toxic things going on at the radio station.

Number one, it felt like I was making the band.

My responsibilities spanned from working on the show.

I worked for the Angie Martinez show.

It was the number one radio show at the time.

This was like 10 years ago.

This is not an overnight success story, you know?

So basically, Angie sometimes would come up to me and be like, My nail chipped.

My interview is in 30 minutes.

You have 30 minutes to go take my driver and go try to find this nail color.

I have no idea what it's called.

Find it.

Or she'd be like, this dry shampoo, they haven't made it in four years.

In between your work today, go find this dry shampoo that they no longer make.

Unbelievable.

So she would do stuff like that all the time.

And then I would have to babysit her kid and do whatever.

What?

She never even paid me $20.

I made all my money at night.

Then I grew up and I started a company when I was around her age when I was her intern, basically, her glorified intern that taught all the other interns and never got paid.

And I had my own interns and my own volunteers and I treated them so well.

That's when I really disliked her because I was like, damn, she was a bad boss.

I was just such a good, tried to just do whatever.

And I just wanted the opportunity.

But I think looking back, she was never going to give me that opportunity.

I was basically going to take her throne is probably how she thought about it.

So she needed to get me out.

It's a wild experience, though, when you have been in a really toxic environment or had a really bad boss.

And then you're in that spot and you're like, it's not that hard to advocate for someone else, be a decent person, to be understanding when someone needs a sick day, whatever.

And it, yeah, totally makes you so much angrier because you're like, it wouldn't have been that hard for them to not be an asshole to me.

Or just pay me herself.

I don't know how much money she was making.

Yeah.

But at the time, I would have been happy with a couple hundred bucks a week.

Like, you know, so.

Well, not paying someone to babysit your kid is wild because then you only were doing a good job because you're a nice person.

I was supposed to be that my payment was being holla from Hot 97 and hanging out with celebrities and hanging out with her.

And like all the smokes and mirrors was my payment.

Your story just reminds me, and I think probably a lot of listeners, the media industry was nefarious, notorious for these types of stunts.

Well, you came from the MTV space, Matt.

You know this, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I didn't have it as bad, but like I remember a time where I was also interning and they had me shuttling beta tapes, betamax tapes.

I was like 22 or something, and I was just like, oh my god, is this what it is to work in media?

The good news is it paid off as I worked my way up there.

But is this the media industry the way it used to be?

As I think about that, and whether maybe this was exclusive or specific to the media industry, it's the ultimate karma that the media industry gets it in the ass.

Why independent media, whether it be podcasting and YouTube, for all the bullshit they put young workers through, the type of bullshit you're talking about, it's known for that.

And the other thing it's known for, especially music, is a sexual harassment.

I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole, but was not a great safe environment for me as a 19-year-old working at that station.

And I think that's one of the reasons why they probably fired me is they probably knew that I had so much on them in regards to the sexual harassment that i would face and so i think they just were like she's gotta go so i want to take to that pivot point in your story here and then talk about it wasn't really even a re-emergence it was just an emergence of who you were and the best qualities of what you wanted to bring to this one place and that you ended up transcending and you built something else.

On that note, one thing I assumed in the story and I didn't ask you about, and maybe we could use this as a pivot point.

We talk about this being a dream job.

It didn't go that way, but but what did you dream your ending would be there, hollow, with Hot 97?

Did you have a vision of what you wanted ultimately?

To be honest, it would have been like Angie Martinez's spot on her show.

Like I was kind of, I did want to get her

job.

You weren't going for her.

You weren't going for her after all.

That's real.

It's okay, but at the same time, we know business is business.

And that's like quarterbacks, right?

Sorry, Alea, for the sports analogy.

She always yells at me for the sports analogy, but you draft a quarterback.

There's always a competition.

We're in a a competitive field.

There was a post here that said, I just realized my side hustle is making more than my nine to five job.

Should I go all in and quit?

Now, I bring that post up.

This is something you found on Reddit.

I bring that post up because of this.

You had a transition point, and this person obviously is building something on the side.

With you, between the end of that story and the beginning of the new one, were you building something on the side?

Or did that just start after you hit that moment of, oh, crap, and then you had to start from scratch?

What was that pivot in your story?

I just built something right away.

So when I was focused at Hot 97, I was completely absorbed with Hot 97.

I was holla from Hot 97.

That was my identity.

I got fired on a Thursday.

By Sunday, I was working on a new idea.

And I had been blogging on the side for DJ Noonf and Funk Master Flex, and blogs were huge at the time.

This was like 2010-ish.

Blogs were huge at the time.

And so I launched this thing called the sorority of hip-hop.

And I wanted to recruit all these different girls, start this blog.

I went back to college, a little bit older, and started this blog on the side.

And it blew up right away.

We basically hacked Twitter, blog got really big.

And so I did not start that as a side hustle, but I did start Yap Media and my podcast as a side hustle.

And I'm happy to talk about that.

You talked about hacking Twitter and I guess noticing the blogosphere at the time.

It seems like you and I might have more in common in that regard.

So while I was at MTV, I too kind of saw the writing on the wall where videos I'd publish onto MTV.com would get a few thousand views, maybe 10,000 views.

We'd take the same video, put it on YouTube.

This is circa 2007.

And we would get hundreds of thousands of views.

I'm like, what are we doing here?

Why are we even publishing this on MTV.com?

Where's the traffic?

And all the exacts they didn't care or they were listless.

They had no idea what was going on.

And it was around that time that I started making my own pivot into social media and.

building different companies, advertising related companies on there.

So is that something you saw too with the blogsphere?

You just noticed, hey, forget radio.

this is where it's at there's no eyeballs on the radio well it was just accessible right so what i started to learn is i needed to keep creating my own path so for me i could create a blog i could go on wordpress find a template create a blog i could train girls i could recruit it i could figure out it was everything i could figure out i didn't need anybody to give me permission to start the blog right and so i was able to create it get it done and it became like a movement now i didn't do a great job of monetizing it i was really young and didn't do a great job of getting advertising for it, even though we had a pretty large following.

But we started hosting events and we started becoming semi-famous in the tri-state area.

People knew about us, especially in the hip-hop world.

And actually, MTV asked us to shoot a reality TV show.

I don't know if, you know, you mentioned you worked at MTV.

They shot us for a whole summer for our own TV show.

I thought I was going to be the next snookie from Jersey Shore because right after Jersey Shore, I was the president.

So I was the mean boss villain of the group.

But that never came out.

But I literally, it became so popular to the point where everybody at Haunt 97 apologized to me.

I started hosting all the parties at Haunt 97.

Angie apologized to me because they felt like, oh, damn, she just did it on her own.

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What's so interesting about Hala's story is that, and a lot of our white-collar professional listeners can relate to this.

There was was the Yap media thing, the blogosphere.

My understanding, Hala, is that you ended up pursuing an MBA after the whole ordeal with Hot 97 and you got an MBA and you worked for Hewlett-Packard.

You did the whole corporate thing for a while.

So basically the pivot to MBA was actually when I didn't get MTV.

So I basically had worked for free for five, six years.

So I worked for free at Hot 97 for three years, went back, got my undergrad.

Then I started this blog for like two-ish years.

And then finally, I was going to make it.

I was going to be the star of my own MTV show.

Like, what a payback, right?

Guys, you didn't have me on Hot Day 7.

Now I got my own TV show.

Then last minute, they pulled the plug and I was devastated.

All my beliefs of I can make it and stuff, I was just like, I need to like get real.

I need a real job.

All my siblings are doctors.

Here I was doing all this crazy stuff and the black sheep of my family.

And so I was like, I'm just going to go get my MBA and use that as a way to pivot into corporate.

I had a 2.3 GPA in undergrad.

So I had to beg to get into MBA school.

And I had to promise them I would get a 4.0.

And I did.

And I got an MBA internship at Hewlett-Packard from that.

Craziest resume in the world, but I crushed it at Hewlett-Packard.

I got quickly hired, kept getting promoted and became the face of the young employees.

And by the end of my experience at Hewlett Packard, I was basically chief of staff working directly for the CEO and CMO and helping them with their QBRs.

And I really rose up the ranks really quickly in four years.

And then my last year at Hewlett Packard, I started my podcast, Young and Profiting as a side hustle.

There it is.

Then I moved to Disney Streaming Services with my podcast.

And my podcast got big right away.

I actually started posting on LinkedIn.

I've been really focused on that platform, became an influencer on that platform.

And then that popped off first.

And then my podcast quickly popped off after that, I would say.

You got us fired up here.

I'm about to flip a table because what I resonate with you, you're hustling.

I hustle too.

I got a competitive fire in me.

You won't believe.

But check this out.

You have, it sounds like this story that we keep oscillating between on this show, which is our listeners, for the most part, are job seekers, meaning we're all seeking, right?

So they're on the one side of job seeking where it's really aggressive and active, or they're just looking or they're building.

And what we've talked about on this show is there's two different paradigms here.

There's one, which is an intrapreneur, sort of what you built within Hewitt, right?

You built and you worked your way up within the corporate structure.

And then there's other folks like myself, the horror stories where I couldn't fit into the corporate space because I was so entrepreneurial, I cannibalized my own efforts within that.

So I just wanted to say, for you, you have this competitive fire.

Did you recognize that even within Hewitt?

Like if you got laid off today or whatever, if like so many people getting laid off, would you go back into the corporate space?

Or did you just know what the launch of the podcast and what happened afterwards?

I am built to be my own entrepreneur.

So when I was at Hewlett-Packard, I actually loved that company.

And it was led by a woman, Meg Whitman, at the time.

And I literally thought that I was just going to be the CMO.

Being a woman at HP, you got treated with the same amount of respect as a man, which is really not the case in a lot of companies.

And the other advantage that I had is that I started as an intern and I wasn't afraid of being an intern.

And so I paid my dues and everyone really respected me because I started as an intern and then I got my next promotion and my next promotion, my next promotion.

And everybody saw me grow up at Hewlett-Packard.

And then I was really involved in the culture.

So from the start, I was president of the Young Employee Network and then part of the Global Young Employee Network and would fly around, always just do things for the company.

And when I first started at Hewlett-Packard, I was really afraid because all my friends have been in corporate already for like four or five years.

I'm starting so late.

I have such a crazy resume.

And I joined the marketing team.

And what I found is that I was light years ahead of everybody else.

I was way better at social than everybody else.

I had way more graphic skills and video skills and SEO skills and all these things that nobody else had because I had been teaching myself all that stuff for so many years, building my own stuff, that I was actually way more advanced than everybody else.

They had institutional knowledge and I had the internet, right?

And so I actually ended up crushing everybody else and like outperforming everybody else when I was scared that I it was going to be quite the opposite.

So it gave me a really big advantage being an entrepreneur, but I am so thankful for my corporate experience because it gave me discipline and I learned how to use PowerPoint and do presentations.

It enabled me to become my full potential as an entrepreneur because I got to learn on Hewlett Packard's dime on how to present and how to create awesome content and so on.

So I really appreciate that experience.

But my experience at Disney was the total opposite.

It was a boys club.

So I look really young for my age.

I'm 39.

And even at Disney, I looked 10 years younger than I was.

So I went to Disney, even though I had all the experience, they started treating me like an intern again.

And I was running their whole like email mobile team, but not given the director position.

I didn't get promoted.

And everybody just treated me so differently than I was treated at Hewlett-Packard.

And that's when I started my company, Yap Media, like the actual agency, my social media podcast agency as a side hustle because I was like, I'm never going to make it at this company.

They poached me, paid me a lot more, but suddenly my career trajectory was so much lower.

I might have just stayed at Hewlett Packard forever if I never left and just kept rising up the ranks.

I wouldn't have even thought of becoming an entrepreneur.

Disney pushed me into becoming an entrepreneur because I was like, I'm not a man.

And I see all these younger guys getting promoted because they're out drinking beers with the boss.

And nobody wants to touch me because I'm too pretty, basically, because nobody wanted to be my mentor in that way.

And so I just needed to do my own thing.

There's two patterns that you can recognize.

and maybe for some of our listeners to be paying attention to.

The first is, in your case, clearly you were not a quiet quitter.

You were actually quite the opposite at the Hewlett Packard experience.

And we talk a lot about in this show about how there's disillusionment in the workplace.

And sometimes that results in a form of quiet quitting.

The type that actually go on to create amazing companies and independent opportunities are the ones that are overachieving.

And so if you find yourself in that realm where you're disillusioned, you're quiet quitting, that doesn't promise well in terms of how you're going to perform outside if you go independent.

I think think that's an important point from your story.

I think the second one, as well, is how dramatically different an experience can be across different companies and cultures.

And so, night and day, you mentioned between Disney and God, I hope Disney is not an advertiser in Glassdoor.

Disney Streaming Services, which was BAM tech, really.

So, it wasn't really proper Disney, it was Disney Streaming Services, which was really BAM tech.

And so, I think that's another lesson pattern for the listeners to be aware of: that dramatically different experience just hopping different companies within similar or semi-similar industries.

So yeah, I just wanted to mention that.

Holla, did Disney or Hewlett Packard, did anyone have any negative feedback about the fact that you had your podcast?

Were they concerned?

I love this question.

Was there any drama there?

Helett Packard was very supportive.

In fact, I was more popular than both CEOs on LinkedIn than the CEO of Hewlett Packard and the CEO of Disney.

I had more followers than them.

Oh my God.

So Hewlett Packard would ask me to like post stuff and like go to the conferences and post stuff and things like that.

They were really supportive.

They allowed me to like go home.

My parents' house was right near the office.

So I would go and record during lunchtime my podcast.

And like they were all supportive.

I was like a rock star at Hewlett Packard.

They let me do whatever I want.

At Disney, I also had my podcast.

And when I applied for the job, I had to note that the podcast existed.

About six months, they caught wind of my podcast and how popular it was.

They noticed Disney tried to say they owned my podcast.

Oh, hell no.

You carved it out.

You carved it out.

You had to carve it.

So the VP of my department had to say no.

And like, they were trying to say that they owned my podcast.

And then I had to be like, it was existed before I started here.

And I put it in writing when I started.

So that went away.

But yeah, at one point, they tried to say that they own my podcast.

Real quick advice for our listeners, just based on a post where someone basically says, hey, listen, I'm applying for an internal job.

I have a side hustle that has tons of relevant experience and I do it all in my spare time.

Should I list this?

Should I talk about it?

On my resume, LinkedIn, et cetera, I have it listed that I am a founder.

So they're a bit worried.

So you're kind of in that situation where you've seen both sides of it.

Any advice for that?

It's just opinion, but just from your point of view, with someone who has a relevant side hustle, but it's not deterring them from doing their work.

Is that something they should be scared of?

Should they list their side sidecars should they list it on their resume if it is related to the same industry i think it's problematic but if it's they have like an etsy store and they work at a tech company i don't think you need to list it personally i think that's smart in your case i think disney wanted to own it because it was a piece of media yeah like hey you know this is a great addition to our portfolio luckily or not even luckily i mean smartly you had carved it out right in advance and so yeah i think that makes sense if it's in the same industry you want to negotiate that up upfront and just make sure it's carved out if you're going to put post on your resume as a.

So, would it be fair to say that this entrepreneurial choice, whether Disney kind of puts you in that, or at least that experience with the Disney streaming services pushes you in that experience?

I can relate to this.

That said,

as an entrepreneur now, I think if I have it right, in like 2022, Yatt Media, it launches correct as an agency.

2021.

2021.

Okay, so 2021, Yatt Media Network launched.

And as of 2025, it's pacing to hit eight figures.

Yeah, we're going to hit hopefully 10 10 million this year.

So, no big deal there.

That said, though, would you say that this entrepreneurial role has democratized the experience for you as a business person, as a businesswoman?

I'm looking over at you, Leah, because Leia, you've done so many great things as an entrepreneur as well.

Maybe you guys can chat a little bit just in terms of, do you feel that it changed the game as opposed to, let's say, in the story we heard, sure, there's good cultures within companies, and then there's cultures that are really bad, especially for women, especially for whatever, different experiences.

My point is, with that being said, does that just take away all that other shit and just say, let's equalize the playing field and let's make this a competition rather than a boys club?

Okay, so for me, and Leigh, I'm happy for you to chime in as well.

I'll just say a couple of thoughts that I have.

So all the things that were weaknesses for me at Disney, like I look really young, I look really feminine, all of those were advantages on social media.

So suddenly I got to use all these things that held me back and corporate to my advantage because I was really smart and I was really a hard worker, but then I was judged.

But on social media, that's a positive thing.

So I was able to put photographs and videos and that like helped me build my personal brand.

And essentially my whole business is built off the back of me having a personal brand.

And essentially.

Before the term existed, I was a creator entrepreneur.

And so I built this asset, LinkedIn, and then I built another asset, podcast.

And then suddenly I had an audience-based business and I could sell them anything.

And so I had an audience-based business on LinkedIn and podcasts where I could get sponsorships, do affiliates, sell my own products and courses, sell basically whatever I wanted.

And then the guests that would come on my show.

had a lot of money and I was able to sell them high ticket things like agency services or joining my podcast network where I get 30% of all their sponsorships and the personal brand that they've built.

So basically, I was able to monetize in all these different ways.

And it all started, honestly, with growing a personal brand with LinkedIn and the podcast.

And like I mentioned, the things that held me back previously in corporate were actually accelerators online.

I feel like a lot of women, I'm sure, can relate to that.

And

even within the corporate world, I was also told I was too girly, I was too nice.

I was basically came across as someone who was too friendly or too fun, essentially.

And those were things that even within the corporate world, within the agency and the team that I built and the clients that I had, I was able to turn into advantages even in the corporate world.

It was about finding the right agency, the right boss who appreciated those things because your team doesn't want to work with someone who's an asshole all the time.

So it's crazy to tell someone in the corporate world, oh, you're too nice.

Like, what do you want me to just be a jerk all of the time?

Like, it's ridiculous.

Proof that that was a sabotage tactic on both your parts is that when you took that same personality and demeanor to the public, to social media, you were absolutely embraced.

You know, both of you have sizable influence-level followerships on different networks.

And so I think that's clearly corporate sabotage of the old school game type 80s and 90s machismo.

One question, follow-up question I just had, Holla, is that you were really early with the LinkedIn influence.

I think it's one thing to say, hey, you know what?

There's an amazing opportunity here on Facebook or Instagram or even TikTok.

But with LinkedIn, many people didn't look at LinkedIn as a place to monetize persona and likes and influence.

And what was it about the network that had you embrace it so early on before others really saw the opportunity?

I think some of it was strategic.

Some of it was I had no choice.

So I was shadow banned on Instagram.

I'm Palestinian, right?

So they've been shadow banning me forever, right?

So I was shadow banned on Instagram since 2014.

Was it because you're you're posting political stuff or just um there was a big war that happened or like situation that happened in 2014 that was the biggest thing that happened since what just is happening now right that was a huge thing where like as a palestinian you have all this responsibility to try to save people that you don't know And it's really tough.

And so I ended up posting a lot, just trying to educate people about the apartheid and all this kind of stuff that was happening there because the media did not do a good job of saying both sides of the story.

So, as a Palestinian, you always feel like you've got to be the journalist because the media doesn't talk about it.

And you feel like you need to be the one speaking the truth to everybody.

It's not a job that I ever want.

I hate being political.

And I wasn't political for many years, but every time there's something huge as a Palestinian, it's like you've got all this guilt of being one that survived and trying to like save other people that you don't even know.

So, I was posting a bunch of stuff in 2014 to try to educate people.

And I've been shadow banned on Instagram ever since then.

And so I was never primed to do well on that platform.

I get all the features late.

I got reels two years after it launched.

I got broadcast channels two years after it launched.

I never get the features on time, whatever.

So to me, that was a dead end.

So I focused on LinkedIn for two reasons.

One is it's professional.

And I started this podcast called Young and Profiting, which was like a business podcast.

I was no longer in the music world and my Instagram was also really branded as me from Holla from Hot 97 and sorority of hip-hop and all that kind of stuff.

So it was a chance for me to be somebody new with people who didn't know me.

And so I basically started my brand completely from scratch and rebranded myself as this.

professional podcaster in the business world.

And before I was this, you know, hip-hop party girl on Instagram.

So I got to rebrand myself and found a place where I have all my target audience.

And then I also like had experience.

I was posting on LinkedIn for Hewlett-Packard and I kind of knew how it all worked.

And I was like, I think I could do this.

I think I can compete and do better on LinkedIn than I would on Instagram.

LinkedIn then and now, is there a shift there?

I mean, this is a different issue we were talking about before, but now, do you notice an oversaturation?

Every place, you know, wherever the eyeballs and the ears are, people run to, that's kind of part of the game.

Yeah.

I mean, now you go down your LinkedIn feed, you just have a bunch of errands.

Erins, I would never have

discovered.

No, that's a very crowded space.

There's a very crowded space.

No one's watching Aaron stuff on LinkedIn, by the way.

LinkedIn's algorithm has changed over the years.

You know, I've been running the number one LinkedIn marketing agency for a long time.

We used to get our posts getting like 100,000 likes, 50,000 likes.

Now, something going viral and getting like 10,000 likes is a huge deal, right?

And it used to just be easier to go viral.

But one thing I'll say is that LinkedIn is a completely hackable algorithm still.

I can teach people how to basically hack the algorithm.

I have a masterclass.

You just need to understand the publishing and engagement strategies.

To your point, here's what I love about your approach, what I'm hearing is that, look, if it's a market and it's an open platform, make it an open platform.

To your point, hacking to me is just giving it the equal opportunity to either be liked or not liked.

There's nothing worse, whether it's shadow banned or suppressed or whatever.

There's just nothing worse when you have something to offer and you don't necessarily know how to work the system because that's an impediment between you and a potential audience.

What I love that you've done here is that you've opened up this system wherever it's at.

You've gone out of necessities to these different places and you've tested the market in a fair and equitable way.

It's a real marketplace.

And you said, this is who I am.

This is what I bring to the environment.

This is my show.

This is the advice I can create.

And then you put it out there in a fair game.

And then if it sucks, it sucks.

But here's the point: it doesn't.

And at this point, like you said, you've grown this agency.

So kudos to to you.

That's fantastic.

Thank you.

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Let's move on to the last part of the conversation here.

I actually think it's perfect the way you highlighted navigating this digital landscape, being on social in our audience.

We have a lot of job seekers who are at work

and they too are building social media presence, whether it's personal or whether it's that side hustle we've been talking about.

Whether they're building it just for themselves or it ends up being something they can monetize, whether it's full-time or just part-time.

And we've talked a lot about corporate surveillance here as a tool that corporations use to basically check and try to rein in this sort of new world of hybrid and remote work.

At the same time, here's a post that says, I thought things were going great at work until my manager pulled me in to say, hey, they'd come across my private Instagram.

A co-worker had apparently shared a harmless post of me at a bar and a meme about hating Monday.

What?

And now I'm being warned it could impact my performance.

So I say all this to say whether you're building a business on purpose.

For the record, that company is a loser company.

Yeah, you gotta think the most mundane thing ever.

Anyway, sorry.

No, I was gonna say, but to that point, Matt, and Holly, I want to get your take on this.

People are building things necessarily, one, for themselves personally, or for a business that might not interfere.

To your point, there's some best practices.

Make sure you're careful here and there.

At the same time, how do you navigate that kind of scrutiny?

Because you've dealt with scrutiny in a lot of different ways and not stop that thing, that side quest, that thing that brings you joy.

What advice do you have for people who are kind of nervous in this new age of corporate surveillance, if that makes sense?

So one of the things that I would say is personal brand is probably one of the most valuable assets that you could have.

If you think about all these big entrepreneurs out there, Alex Ramose, Russell Brunson, Gary Vee, they've got $100 million plus companies already, but what are they investing their time and money in into their personal brand?

Because that's the only only thing that can help you create a moat around your company where nobody can copy you exactly because you are the brand, right?

And you can pivot any way that you want because you have an audience that's going to buy from you no matter what.

It is the best insurance policy.

It's a transferable asset that you take from company to company.

And so building your personal brand is a non-negotiable with a company.

And I think that if you are able to post in a way that is respectful, in a way that doesn't compete compete sales-wise with your company and follows your own passions on social media everything is based on this interest graph right where you want to post about one to three topics over and over again using the same keywords if those topics don't interfere with your work or make you a thought leader within your industry and make you more valuable at work your goals are aligned where you're just using your thought leadership to become a better salesperson or close more deals or whatever it is, then there's absolutely no problem.

And if the job has a problem with that, you should get a new job because building your brand, I think, is one of the safest things that you could do moving into the future.

So I would just say, think about building your personal brand, do it in a way where you're not going to step on toes at work, but also don't be shy about it.

And don't let a job prevent you from creating a security blanket for your career.

I love what you said about treating it as a non-negotiable.

Because I mean, when you think about when you apply for a job, you're negotiating and there's a bunch of criteria and conditions and that you negotiate.

I don't think it's common for folks or professionals to look at your personal brand as a non-negotiable.

And I think treating it that way is really smart and puts you in a position to look at it differently, not just like this add-on or this maybe, but that like, hey, no, I need to start investing in this, particularly in the age of AI.

I know one of the questions we have teed up here is around, I think, AI and maybe potentially the way you see the personal brand space evolving, progressing around AI.

One thing, though, before that, let me actually teat this up.

And Aaron, feel free to rephrase this question because I think you're better at this question than I am.

Something we've noticed in the personal brand space is that it's kind of evolving or progressing from pure thought leadership, where there's someone who's very informed about a topic and can talk about it charismatically to some of that, but also about authenticity, you know, like the Joe Rogans and a lot of individual personalities who may not actually be educated at all formally about some of these topics, just having a lot of trust.

How do you see that playing a role in your own evolution and just for others looking to leverage their personal brand?

I mean, is that real, this authenticity thing?

And how do you play into it?

So there's like a lot of things that I can say with this.

Number one, authenticity and trust is huge when it comes to building any sort of brand.

And the way that you do that is by giving away personal details.

The more personal details that you can give about yourself, the more that somebody trusts you, right?

For example, if you were to give somebody your bank account information, likely their first name, their last name, you know where they live, you know who their kids are, you know everything about them, because otherwise you don't trust them enough to give them your bank account information.

So that's how you need to think about trust online.

People think it's stupid to take pictures of your food.

Well, that's going to build trust because you know what that person's eating, you know what they're doing, you know what their kids look like, and so on, right?

So the more personal details that you can share, the more trustworthy.

As someone who's starting to tiptoe into a personal brand, that one, I totally get it.

it freaks me out how do you get over not wanting to overshare it because maybe you're an individual who's been raised we're like yeah you know privacy is paramount some of it is like an age divide right what are you saying about matt no not the same age as matt i'm just saying when facebook was coming out they were like don't post too much on facebook you'll never get a job and then the world has changed and now it's like post your life on the internet and it will help you maintain a job and you don't really want to work for a company that doesn't value that aspect of your life.

I think it's also about your own mindset.

I saw this meme that when it comes to becoming a creator, creator entrepreneur, everything you want is on the other side of cringe.

Oh, that's the truth.

You've got to just like be cringe for a while.

Yes, people are going to judge you.

Yes, whatever, but you're building an asset.

You've got to think about it as like an investment in yourself.

The other thing I'll say is for job seekers out there, one of the most important things you can do is build your personal brand, especially on a platform like LinkedIn and become searchable for the fields that you want to get a job in.

I remember the reason why I actually left Hewlett-Packard, which ended up being great, but at some point I thought it was a mistake, was because Disney saw me on LinkedIn and poached me.

You know, they're like, oh, she's got podcast experience.

Nobody knows anything about streaming.

We need to hire her.

So it can be an advantage in terms of that's how recruiters find you.

That's how employers find you.

And they'll reach out to you directly on LinkedIn for jobs.

So also like growing your personal brand is really important to get a job the first thing to getting hired you got to be likable right before you have the skills are you likable we had allison for gale she's an author and she recently came out of the book and she's pointing at what you're saying which is the synergy between what you two are talking about and by the way which i've been hold on i've been preaching it for years

they're finally coming around holla they're finally coming around look it's storytelling At the end of the day, to your point, you got to be able to tell your own story for our job seekers out there, for our listeners.

people think, okay, I'm just going to deliver.

I'm going to go in there.

I'm going to be a great employee.

Cool.

But you got to tell your story.

You got to leverage a narrative.

And what Holla's talking about is wonderful in the sense that part of that is vulnerability, sharing personal details.

It can be selective.

It doesn't have to be everything.

You don't have to document from morning to night.

As a storyteller, when I check in seven minutes on audio with an extemporaneous story with all my audience, I'm just sharing portions of my life, right?

But to Holla's point, you're giving something and you're saying, hey, listen, I have something to risk here.

Here's a promise I'm going to make you.

First, I'm going to take you from A to B to C.

Second, I'm going to share something of me with you.

And to your point, Holla, that's probably why you've noticed that trust is built over time.

And I think what, Matt, what you were saying, where you can kind of still parse out the folks that are out there touting to be halatahas and saying, like, okay, yeah.

And you know, it's the difference is you won't trust them because they're not giving anything of themselves.

It's sort of just a facade's performance art.

So it is a new skill we have have to have in this digital age to figure out who are the people who are giving something about themselves sharing value willing to be vulnerable to your point on the other side of cringe and those who are just willing to give you a facade and if you can tell that that's where the trust factor comes in to that point for a lot of people sitting right now some of you guys are sneaking hash browns in your pocket in the cafeteria i know those very good right hash browns you're hiding in the bathroom at your job maybe your work made you come back into the office and you're tired of it and you're listening to the lonely office maybe you have this sense that you want to grow inside your company maybe you have this sense that maybe it's time to leave holly you've been through a lot as far as the obstacles that you've overcame as well as the media empire that you essentially have built are there certain skill sets Outside of just your personal skill set, are there universal things that you see that people can hold on to as a lighthouse to know that no matter what happens, they have the tools to still be able to overcome something as scary as, oh, something shifted.

I got booted.

My dream was deferred kind of deal.

Any sort of motivational advice or at least some insights there?

So one thing that I'll go back to is start building your personal brand.

I don't care if you feel like you have nothing to talk about.

One thing I want to know, and it goes back to something I think Matt was asking about, is that you can have whatever relationship that you want with your audience.

You don't have to be the expert.

You could be the cheerleader.

When I first started, I was a reporter.

All I did was interview really smart people.

I didn't think I could teach people yet, right?

And so I would just interview smart people and report out what I learned.

And that was my relationship.

Other people, they're more of like hype women, hype man.

There's so many different relationships that you can take with your audience.

It doesn't have to be expert yet, or you could be somebody who's documenting their learning journey on a certain topic.

They want to become an expert and they're going to show you how their transition, right?

Everybody loves the transformation.

So there's so many different roles that you can take with your audience.

So don't let you feeling like you've nothing to talk about stop you from building your personal brand.

Y'all get that?

Yeah.

Don't let fear get in the way.

That's what I'm saying.

Don't let fear.

Think about like, okay, what are you passionate about?

What is the relationship with your audience?

What is the topic and the keywords that you're going to focus on?

So the algorithm knows how to find you and show you to the relevant users.

And just do that over and over and over and over again till you get better at it.

And that's going to give you insurance in this world because AI is coming.

And I really think that the most successful people that I even see now, I see all my friends who stayed in corporate.

A lot of them, unfortunately, are laid off or they're unhappy or their salary hasn't changed in five years.

Meanwhile, I'm making a million dollars a year personally.

I've 10x'd what I used to make in corporate.

Is COT 97 still around?

You know, they are.

They're asking me how to go podcasts.

I've got the DJs like, how can I get in podcasts?

You know,

so it's all coming full circle.

But basically, what I'm trying to say is nothing will compare in terms of the scalability and the compounding that will happen with your ability to make income more than building a personal brand.

Nothing compares right now.

So every successful person that I know that has an extremely successful company also, for the most part, has a really great brand or they've been doing it for 30 years and they've able to like skirt around it, you know?

But anybody who's somebody younger, under, you know, 60 years old, 50 years old, you got to have a personal brand.

This is the future.

AI is scary.

The other thing I'll say is I interview on my podcasting and profiting a lot of AI folks.

And this is going to go really deep, but we might be the last generation that is able to really live our own purpose.

How so?

Go further with that.

We might live in a world soon where all the problems are solved.

And so it's like a wake-up call.

It's like, what are you going to do to live in your purpose?

We might be the last generation or the last generations of people that actually have a purpose because there's still problems to solve.

Just on that note, I got to share this story.

There's a well-respected VC I've worked with before recently.

They just posted about an incident where they met up with a college dropout from Stanford.

He dropped out freshman year.

And he asked them, why are you dropping out?

You know, everybody's given multiple reasons.

It's not a new narrative.

He said because he was afraid this is the last opportunity to kind of lock in his status, his wealth, you know, et cetera, before his funding, before AI takes it all.

Yet clearly there's this fear, you know, whether it's irrational or rational is another podcast.

We can talk about it, but this fear does exist.

And we know it exists even amongst the professional listeners to this podcast who've talked about many times and called in and get questions on their fear.

Their job is being automated away.

Something that we thought only would happen to blue collar workers in Ohio is now happening to the white collar class.

It is.

It is going to happen.

I've talked to every single expert.

I've talked to like all the inventors of AI.

It's really scary.

It literally is going to to happen.

AI is going to basically automate almost every single job that we can think of.

What about storytellers, Hella?

One of the only things that it's not going to be able to take away is sports, maybe some sort of art, storytelling.

It might be nostalgic to listen to a podcaster and a real human.

But a lot of things are going to go away.

And what you need to figure out is how you can basically take AI and make yourself more powerful, this concept of AI agents.

There's going to be a world in which you can have a whole company that's just you and your army of AI agents.

And you're able to work on things and have extreme intelligence.

And it's just you and a bunch of agents.

People are going to be co-founding companies with their AI agents.

I can attest to that one.

I think I mentioned on this podcast before, the new startup I have cooking, I've elected not to take a co-founder on or even a chief of staff because I found my AI partner has done that job and done it really well, frankly, where a co-founder I usually needed just to bounce ideas off of or a chief of staff I needed to research areas, I can do it in minutes on the podcast.

The one thing I want to say is, by the way, Aaron doesn't know this, but I've already cloned

and developed 10 Aaron AI agents.

I'm ready to just outsource.

Is there anybody out there?

You're going to dismiss Aaron.

Oh my gosh.

People who are strategic, who are creative thinkers,

people who are smart now and great entrepreneurs now are just going to keep becoming smart people now and creative entrepreneurs in the future with AI, right?

It's just don't be scared of it.

Use it.

Figure out how to take advantage of creating business models around it now while everybody wants AI and it's still new and there's still opportunities to monetize leveraging AI.

Think about how to use it in your workflows.

It's going to be basically working with it for a while until it's not.

And hopefully things go well and it's more of like a positive world where all the problems are solved and we're all rich.

And, you know, or it could go a whole other way where it's AI takes over and we're more treated like animals now it's it is scary if anybody wants to take a listen to some of my episodes about it it's like every big expert kind of has the same but different opinions it's like it could just swing either way you know i always say on this is i always say we're either going to live in a star trek world or a matrix world the star trek world is a hybrid world where we use it to our advantage and adapt and a matrix world is we're all batteries so that being said hope we don't go down that world and for a bit of a balm for the listeners I hear what you're saying and it's real.

On that note, for folks that don't have the entrepreneurial gene, what I'm hearing from you, because a bulk of our listeners too are within the corporate structure or small, medium-sized businesses, the skills you're talking about, though, Holla, those can be applied inside your job.

I have worked at places where it was like, I made up my own title.

I became like storyteller in chief.

You can do whatever you want.

You can take an entrepreneurial approach and become an intrapreneur.

So that's another thing I always want to talk to listeners about.

Don't just rely on a skill set.

Am I always says change is happening?

We all know that's inevitable.

And just adapt your skill set to be like an entrepreneur inside.

And then to your point, they come to you as a thought leader in those spaces.

You've seen that in your work.

They come to you.

How do you do that?

How do you leverage AI?

Work that side hustle and you can integrate it into a job as well.

I'm not trying to make it sunshine and rainbows, but I'm saying there is in between the here and the deaf.

You know what I'm saying?

There's ways we can adapt in the corporate space and outside of the corporate space as well.

Yeah.

And I think it's just learning how to use the tools so you can 10x your output.

Don't be a quiet quitter like we were talking about before.

Nobody's going to want to keep a quiet quitter around, especially if you can easily be replaced by AI.

Leverage AI to create 10x better productivity than you had before.

My whole team uses AI, right?

If you leverage AI and you become worse 10 employees, you're not going to get let go.

So it's like, how can you step up what you're doing and improve your output with AI in the interim?

And hopefully everything will be all good.

Holla, it was amazing having you here.

I know we went over a little bit.

Thanks for the extra time.

There's going to be all the call to actions, all the links, all the stuff in the episode description on all the platforms for people to check out.

Anything in the pipeline, though, that you want to plug?

Anything going on?

Because I know you got a thousand things going on that you want to talk about right now.

If you guys are interested in agency services or production services for social media, gapmedia.com.

And also I have a podcast network.

So if you have a large podcast and you want sponsorships, hit me up.

It was a pleasure not only having you, but also you choosing to join us on the Lonely Office.

I know you're busy.

Your schedule is busy.

Thanks for coming onto the show.

And hopefully we can have more conversations in the future.

This is awesome.

Young improfiters, I had such a great time being on the Lonely Office podcast.

I love their format.

It was super unique.

So huge kudos to Matt, Aaron, and Leah for having me on.

And I hope my story reminded you of how powerful your personal brand can be because for me personally for years i gave up everything working on other people's dreams working on a brand that wasn't mine i worked for free i played by the rules i waited for somebody to give me that big break but the moment i stopped waiting and started building i took back all my control my personal brand became my power source it opened up doors i was able to build trust it gave me the leverage i never had in corporate and here's the truth jobs they come and go Titles change.

But your personal brand, that's yours forever.

It follows you from job to job, from industry to industry.

It is one asset that just can't be taken away from you because you own it.

So whether you're working a nine to five, launching a side hustle, or navigating a major pivot, start building your brand now.

It's your ticket to freedom, influence, and future-proofing your success.

Yap, fam, thank you for your attention.

I know there's so many other places that you can direct it, and I'm grateful that you're spending time with me on Young and Profiting.

And if you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation, please bring it to somebody else's attention.

Share this episode with somebody who you know could benefit from it.

Also, why not drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify while you're at it?

It just takes a second, and nothing helps us reach more people than a good review from you.

You can also find me on Instagram at YattwithHala or LinkedIn by searching my name.

It's Halata Taha.

And of course, I've got to give a special shout out to my Yap Media team.

Thank you so much for all your hard work.

My show is produced in-house by our award-winning podcast production team.

You guys are rock stars.

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