Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Hala Taha: Game-Changing LinkedIn and Podcast Hacks Nobody Is Telling You (Living The Red Life Podcast)

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Hala Taha got her start in radio at HOT97, but she was fired before she could advance past her role as an unpaid intern. She was also scouted by MTV, and after a long summer of shooting a reality show with them, MTV pulled the plug with no explanation. Even after multiple failures in the entertainment industry, Hala broke into the podcasting world in 2018 and leveraged her LinkedIn account to grow her podcast. Now, she’s fondly known as the Podcast Princess, since she’s one of the top female podcasters in the education and business space. She also runs a multimillion-dollar media agency. In this episode of Rudy Mawer's podcast, Living The Red Life, you’ll learn some of Hala’s tips for hacking the LinkedIn algorithm and how to start, grow, and monetize your own podcast.  In this episode, Hala and Rudy will discuss:  - How Hala spotted an opportunity on LinkedIn  - The power of sharing positive messages that people can relate to  - How can you strategically use LinkedIn to grow your business?  - Why your feed is where you grow, and your DMs are where you sell  - Where is there room to grow your brand in the podcasting universe? - What is your creative ‘in’ to build a flywheel of success?  - How to grow your podcast when you don’t have money - How Hala embraces consistency and shows up every day  - Don’t let the gatekeepers tell you NO!  - And other topics… Rudy Mawer is a serial investor and CEO of multiple brands and manages over 70 staff. Currently, he runs multiple businesses, including a Marketing Capital group with Kevin Harrington, the Original Shark from the TV show “Shark Tank”, where he helped over 50,000 small businesses around the world. He works with high-ticket coaches and online entrepreneurs who want to scale fast. Whether you’re just starting out or already have a 7-figure business, he’ll work with you to create a custom plan to hit your goals. Rudy built his first multimillion-dollar business by the age of 26, with Facebook ads, and since went on to become one of the world's leading experts on ads, funnels, and marketing strategy, speaking over 200 times on stage about how to scale online brands. He built 4 multimillion-dollar businesses before the age of 30.  LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘masterclass’ for 35% off at yapmedia.io/course. Resources Mentioned:  Living The Red Life Podcast: https://theredlife.com/podcast/  Mawer Captial: https://mawercapital.com/  Rudy’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer  Rudy’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rudymawerlife/?hl=en  Rudy’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rudymawerlife/  Sponsored By:  Shopify - Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/profiting Just Thrive - Use promo code YAP for 15% off sitewide at https://justthrivehealth.com/discount/YAP More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com   Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala Learn more about YAP Media Agency Services - yapmedia.io/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. What is up, and Profiters? Today, we're replaying my interview on Rudy Moore's podcast Living the Red Life. Rudy is an investor, entrepreneur, and speaker who's known as the Man in Red for always wearing bright red. He's one of the top marketers in the world and he's also a living legend in the Facebook ad and funnel space. Rudy just launched his Living the Red Life podcast and I had the honor of being one of his first guests.

We talk all things LinkedIn and podcasts. Both LinkedIn and podcasts can be great lead gens for your business so I highly recommend this episode to all of my entrepreneur listeners. And if you don't own a business leveling up your LinkedIn or starting a podcast can be a great asset for your personal brand So you'll want to stay tuned regardless If you'd like to dive deeper on the topic of LinkedIn I have a new two-day virtual LinkedIn masterclass and my next session is February 22nd to the 23rd Seats are filling up incredibly fast So go to yappmedia.io-course to save your seat and you can use code podcast to get 40% off the master

class. And trust me, it's worth every penny, even at full price. All right, so let's get into it. Here's my interview with Rudy Moore on his new podcast, Living the Red Life. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today. I am super excited to be on this show. Thanks for having me, Rudy.

Yeah, my pleasure. And all this we connected recently recently like I explained to you offline We're always looking for other experts that have figured out a platform right and also figured out the personal branding And obviously you've got a lot going on But a lot of my members, you know, we're mastering Facebook ads. I've spent millions of millions and having LinkedIn's like this this secondary platform. I'm always asked about and we've never really gone too deep into it So I know hundreds and thousands of my members and fans are gonna love today because LinkedIn's like this I feel I still feel in this early phase even though it's been around a long time and obviously you've mastered the podcast inside the personal

Brand side got an amazing story so maybe we can start there with the story and tell the members and fans and listeners how you got here today and built something so great. Sure, so just to quickly introduce myself in terms of where I am now they call me the podcast princess. I'm a top email podcaster in the business and entrepreneurship space. I'm also one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn. Right now, I'm running a company called YAP Media. We reached over $5 million and left them two years. Then I have 60 employees around the world. And I manage most of the LinkedIn influencers. And I also have a podcast network where I manage five out of the top 20 business shows and several other shows and help them grow and monetize. So that's where I'm at now. I wasn't in overnight success. I started my career in radio at

hot 97, the number one hip-hop and R&B station. I actually dropped out of college and took a three-year internship, worked for free. Then I started a blog site called The Sorority of Hip-hop. I had 150 female bloggers under me. Almost had a show on MTV. That rejected from MTV. They pulled the flood last minute, and then I went into corporate. So I had a corporate stint and I really thought my entertainment career was over. And I'd never get back on a mic. I worked at Huwlett Packard, then Disney streaming services had a great corporate career. And four years into it, I decided to start this podcast. I thought, you know what, I have all the skills podcasting is going mainstream.

I can crack this code. I hacked Twitter when I was younger. I figured out how to hack LinkedIn. And then I hacked podcasting and hearing him today. Good element. So I'm walking back to that. I like the, I figured out how to hack LinkedIn, and then I hacked podcasting in here on Em today. Good element. So, I'm walking back to that. I like the hacked part, right? You like see a channel, see that it's growing, see that it's performing, then like reverse engineer's success, and that's kind of how I went with Facebook. So, where do you see, like obviously podcasts has been great view, and you've grown so much. Where did you see that

opportunity with social media and how do you see social media now as a platform because obviously we both have our different platforms that we use and like and love. So how do you see it as a landscape? Yeah, 100%. So when I first started podcasting, what I noticed is that the people who would list on my podcast, I have a self-improvement business podcast. I would post something on Instagram and people would only like it if it was fashion-related, if it was me, like in a cute outfit. You know, it was just a different vibe. People were interested in different things

and got entertained in different ways. Then I noticed on LinkedIn, people actually carried about what was in my brain. It wasn't just about what I looked like, what I was wearing. And so I thought that, you know, my audience is really here and I noticed that all the podcasters were really sleeping on LinkedIn.

There's a real avenue here for me to be the number one podcaster on LinkedIn. And that could give me a lot of leverage and it did. It really was the thing that set off my whole career. It wasn't the podcast. I started my LinkedIn journey to blow up the podcast, but it was really LinkedIn that set everything off for me. That's where I blew up first. So essentially I realized that there was a gap.

You can not only stand out with your content and your visual identity on social media, you can also stand out with your topic. And I thought nobody else is talking about podcasting. And so I was just consistent every day, figured out the algorithm, experimented, grew a community, you know, figured out the engagement hacks

that you need to understand on LinkedIn to win. And people don't understand that. LinkedIn is like any other social media platform. Like, of course, people are going there to get a job, but at the end of the day, it's like any other social media platform where their goal is to keep users engaged and entertained on the platform and not take users off.

So I just was thinking about ways, how can I become a valued content creator on LinkedIn so they reward me and help me go viral while also helping them keep users entertained. So that was really my logic in terms of focusing on LinkedIn. Yeah, I love that. And we are punders and members we teach marketing too. And I always say, like, figure out a unique selling point, go a little niche when you're

starting. And then generally what I teach and I've seen is when you get into your first sort of 5, 10 million, it's good to be niche and then you're like, okay, now I'm at 10, I want to go to 100ml, is like, okay, I've got to go a bit broader, right? So you kind of, and then you'll live improve, right? As you just said, that really helped expedite that, right? And then you're kind of like, I don't want to answer for you, but now you've grown, you've got 60 staff and you're doing a lot of amazing things.

Do you see now that you're trying to expand out and go beyond there? As you go to, I don't know what your goals are, but you know, going broad and bigger, do you feel that niche in the start works? And now it's going a little more expensive or not? Yeah, 100%. So when I first started out, even though my podcast was niche in a sense that I was talking about my podcast. My topics were always broad. And by far, the number one way to go viral on social media is to be as shareable as possible. And there's really only three things that are shareable. It's educational content, motivational content, and interactive content, right? And so if you want to go as viral as

possible and grow a community, you want to stay in that motivational, inspirational lane. That's the thing that gets shared the most that's a more broad relevant to everyone. And so people think of me on social media as this inspirational mentor. They don't necessarily think of me as a podcaster because I'm always sharing positive messages that people can relate to. So to basically answer your question is I am going super broad because I know that's what's gonna be the most shareable and is gonna go the most viral. Great. Yeah, and I've been let you know, I want wanna talk dive into the podcast side because obviously I've launched mine more recently

after many years of thinking about it than actually acquiring a podcast agency as I told you. And but one thing I've learned even with all my clients through my agency for the last five years is people that listen to podcasts become the most loyal, raving fans because they spend in so much time with you, right? So amazing, you know, vehicle and you've obviously done a great job of that.

So we'll circle back, but I would love to dive into LinkedIn. Like I said, we have hundreds of members that there's an opportunity there, especially if they're more B2B or certain niches and high ticket, et cetera. So can you give us like the 80, 20 of LinkedIn? What, you know, for someone that's maybe thought about using it, how can they strategically use LinkedIn to grow a business? OK, so first off, there's lots of opportunity on LinkedIn.

Only 5% to 6% of people on LinkedIn are actually content creators. So huge opportunity. Most people on LinkedIn are actually consumers, which is very different from Instagram. And so as soon as you turn on content creator mode on LinkedIn, you're instantly ahead of the game because like I said, there's only five to six percent of people were actually creating content. So on LinkedIn, you really want to think about the feed and DMs as two separate things. The feed is really how you go viral,

grow a community, get shared, position yourself as a thought leader, provide value with educational posts, motivational posts. That's how you grow. You don't really want to do too much selling on LinkedIn in the feed because actually LinkedIn's algorithm will deprioritize that. I'm happy to go through the entire algorithm with you guys today, if you'd like. Then, selling is really for the DM. If you create an educational piece of content, it gets shared.

The way that LinkedIn works is when somebody shares your content or even engages on it, they're following actually sees that engagement and you actually attract people who are like-minded to that original person who engage on your posts, which helps grow your network. Then anybody who engages likes or comments on your posts, you can then retarget in the DMs and say, hey, I noticed that you engaged on my posts. I would love to provide you, you know, this value will, like more valuable information and then you can like, go on and have some sort of drip campaign in the DMs that will ultimately lead to a call

or taking them to a lead form, whatever it is. So really, like long story short, feed is to grow. DMs is where you sell on LinkedIn. Yeah, and see, on your saying you can actually take that, run ads to the DMs for anyone that engaged, right? Not ads, you can actually run on ads run ads to the DMs for anyone that engaged, right? Not ads, you can actually really corner it. Okay, colonists. People on the DMs.

So basically looking who's liking and commenting and then direct messaging them with more information. Okay, but that's you outbounding as like a person, you know, yourself or like having like a VA or something like that. Yeah, yeah. I've been waiting for so long for an ad platform to let you run ads in the DMs, right? Like I had to board a Facebook group of 80,000 people because I do believe at some point, they will let you do some sort of retogging

and end the DMs and Facebook groups in these communities because they'll run out of ad space eventually and they'll be like, hey, we need extended ad space. But yeah, I see. So we have a lot of coaches, consultants, agencies. So let's talk and dive into that. So say I'm a high ticket coach or a consultant or an agency or not, how I give us a bit of a step by step on LinkedIn.

If you don't mind, I'm like, hit his, start posting here, then do this, then do this. What would the play be if you were trying to summarize in a few minutes? Okay. So essentially, one of your biggest priorities on LinkedIn is to proactively bring in a targeted engaged audience. Because that's how you basically play the algorithm. So a lot of people make the mistake. They've been on LinkedIn for seven years. They've been inviting random people. Some people go on LinkedIn, they get a job, they never come back, and they've got a lot of dead connections. This is one of the biggest problems that I see with entrepreneurs

that ask me for my help. They've got lots of dead connections and that's a really big problem because part of the algorithm when you're first putting out a post is they're going to feed it to a subset of users. And if you have a lot of dead connections and nobody's engaging, LinkedIn's going to think that your post is not valuable and is not going to warrant future engagements. And so they're going to stop serving that content. And so it's really important for things first to clean up your followers, remove dead connections. If they haven't been active in 30 days, you can find that out from LinkedIn Navigator, and you would want to remove them as a connection. Then you want to find your

audience in mass and proactively bring them into your network. And so for example, when I was starting out on LinkedIn, I was thinking that GaryVee has a following that is just like mine. I'm a marketer, I have a podcast, everybody calls me the female Gary Vee. So I am going to try to target his engaged users. So anybody who likes and comments on his post is an engaged person on LinkedIn who actively does viral actions on the platform

and you want those people in your network. So I would basically invite them and say, hey, what's up, my name's Holly. I notice you engage on Gary Vee's post. I'd love to invite you to my network, provide more value on your network. So I would basically invite them and say, Hey, what's up? My name is Hala. I notice you engage on Gary V's post. I'd love to invite you to my network, provide more value on your feed. Nine out of 10 people would accept. All of a sudden, I had 10,000 of Gary V's fans. Every time I come in and Gary V's post, I'd get a hundred likes. More people would see who I am. And little did I know that I was tricking the algorithm. So when you invite somebody to connect and you have a new connection, they're seeing

your DMs at the top of their feed for two weeks. When somebody responds and DMs back to you, they're seeing your stuff at the top of their feed for two weeks. If somebody engages on your stuff, your posts, they're going to start seeing your stuff at the top of the feed. So I was feeding the algorithm unknowingly until I realized what I was doing and I understood the algorithm and why it was working so well. So if you can find your lookalike profiles,

this is one of the first things I tell people to do in my masterclass, you've got to see who is actually already has your audience that you want, and then you want to pull those people into your network, and they will start to see more of your posts once they are connected with you. So really big hack right there. Yeah, I love that. And when you say just sclybber, when you say pull them in,

is there a way you can run ads, so X would either, or you have to stop manually doing connections. Like, I'm the ad guy. So if I can automate it for a bunch of money at it, I might let's go, you know. OK, so there are, so there's lots of automation tools on LinkedIn, and you have two routes. So you can either have a VA.

And by the way, guys, this all of this is not necessarily within terms of service for LinkedIn. So if you're going to go with the VA routes, you're actually not allowed to have anybody post on your behalf on LinkedIn, but everybody's doing it. Okay, and so if you're gonna go with the VA route, you need to make sure you have a VPN that's logging in from your city, so it doesn't look like there's multiple

people in your account, you need to be pretty careful. And there's different automation tools, like Link, Tell, Burr, and things like that. And basically you can run automation where you can scrape posts. You can say, okay, here's my lookalike audience Gary Vee. You plug in that link. It will scrape everybody who liked and commented and you can write the boilerplate message, customize it with the first name and send out these automated campaigns. That is like, you know, next level, you know,

you like you know what you're doing. You've got a team. You can implement some rules and some thresholds so you don't get flagged and things like that. Don't do it if you don't have the expertise or you're not gonna learn about it, I would advise against it. If you're like so low and you're willing to start slow, do it manually. I did it all manually before I knew you could automate it, and I got really far, almost 100,000 followers

doing it manually, right? So you could just do it manually and invite people to connect and just go from there. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. The Millionaire University

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So what about more on the conversion side? Right. So we took that growth second part. It's conversion. How do we take these people and convert them into, you know, raving fans or customers? Yeah, so if you're looking to generate R.I. from LinkedIn and you're targeting a specific person that wants to buy your niche services, you really need to focus on educational content in your feed. And so like I mentioned, the LinkedIn algorithm really doesn't want to promote promotional salesy content. That's why you actually can't link out in your caption to a third party website.

You'll get deep prioritized. If you use any sort of call to actions that have salesy keywords, you're going to get deep prioritized. And so you need to make sure that your feed content is actually pure value, educational, and sort of indirectly relates to what you want to sell. And we'll give you a clue of who may be interested in what you're selling. So anybody who likes and comments on your posts, they're raising their hand. They're saying, you have permission to message me and it won't be spammy, right?

So you can say, Hey, I noticed that you engaged on my post about real estate. I would love to give you some more information about my services. You provide them with some sort of free value. Then you follow up. Let me know what your feedback is and follow up with another message and send them to book a call to a lead form. So basically what I'm trying to say is that create educational content that's going to pull people in, that's going to help you understand who's actually interested in your content, then you re-engage them in the DMs and figure out a track for them to actually

go have a call or whatever, the higher the ticket, the more likely you actually need to talk to them or have some second conversation. If it's a low ticket, you send them right to your website and try to convert them because hopefully you've made it clear that you're the expert in the space. Yep, love it, love it. Okay, great play by play and we'll circle back at the end on how they can dive deeper into that. Let's talk a little about podcasts because I see they're both great platforms, right?

LinkedIn, I think, says still kind of in a way blue ocean even though it's been around for a long time compared to Facebook and Insta. What about podcasting, right? Because you obviously, you know, you've got a top podcast. How has that helped you grow the business? What's it done for you as a personal brand? And how did you grow it to so, you know,

to become one of the best and the biggest? Yeah, so my podcast is called Young in Profiting. It's a number one entrepreneurship podcast. So I've had Rudy Yantomar, I've had Grand Cardone, Alex Ramuzi, Matthew McConaughey, Seth Godin, Robert Shaldini, like I've interviewed all the greats on my show. It's such a wonderful platform.

And in terms of, you know, how I actually leveraged it to grow my brand, grow my business, my podcast was actually the first way that I monetized anything. So I was a huge LinkedIn influencer, number one, podcast around LinkedIn. It wasn't until I was open to the opportunities that were around me.

And I was really like over my corporate job, wanted to become an entrepreneur. And I realized that all the guests that would come on my show, and I had big guests from the start because people just believed in my journey and everything that I had done before that, they would always say, hello, like how'd you grow on LinkedIn?

Your videos are so awesome. Can you do this for me? Can you produce podcasts for me? Can you run my social media? And I'd always say no. And it wasn't until Heather Monahan, I don't know if you know her, she's my first client. She basically stalked me for months.

And was like, Hala, like your team is amazing. I had a team of 20 volunteers, super fans, from my podcast that would just volunteer and work for me for two years. I converted them into a team, started running all of Heather's platforms, blew her up even further, and then just got client after client, billionaire CEOs, best-selling authors,

really it's a white glove luxury social media agency for top influencers and celebrities. And it was my podcast and the guest that would come on my show, which is how I first monetized, which is really unusual. Most people monetized first with sponsors and things like that. I saw the way to generate revenue right away,

it was through my guest. And then I used that money to invest and grow my podcast. And basically what happened is it was almost by mistake. So like I mentioned, I became the number one podcaster on LinkedIn. And so I realized that there was a real problem with Apple and discoverability and all the guys on Apple who were rocking it started 10 years before I did.

And I was like, there's no way that I'm going to be able to compete. I'm never getting featured in the Apple app, but there's actually 70 other apps in the ecosystem. And I realized like, I've got a real opportunity with these other apps that want my audience on LinkedIn. And so I reached out to passbox and player FM and podbean and all these other apps. And I said, hey, I'll promote you on my LinkedIn

in exchange for you promoting me in your app, for you giving me a banner ad, for you sending out an email bus, featuring me on your website. And I basically traded my audience until I literally blew up. I went from getting 5,000 downloads a month to 100,000 downloads and more. This was like years ago. I get more downloads now, but I'm saying when I first started, I got on the cover of Podcast Magazine, and then I got Mac and Maconahe on the show,

and everything sort of just accelerated from that point because I got creative and had leverage on one platform back to what you originally were asking me in terms of like why did you focus on LinkedIn? Because I knew that if I focused on Instagram, YouTube and all these other apps, I would never get any leverage. And the only way to grow anything is to have leverage, at least starting if you don't have a lot of money in one place. And so I got the leverage on LinkedIn and then used that to basically grow, blow up my podcast, blow up my business. Then I had two assets, my podcast and my LinkedIn that I'm that to basically blow up my podcast, blow up my business.

Then I had two assets, my podcast and my LinkedIn that I'm now using to blow up my Instagram and my YouTube. And so it's basically getting leverage in little pockets and then moving on to other platforms. Yeah. I mean, I teach this a lot more on the business side as well, right? Like leveraging, you know, different, you know, tribes is important. You're following is important. sometimes it's your offer. So a lot of the greatest billionaires

that are all about leverage and there's something that I've used to be successfully to get to where I am today. And I love that, we are, I think, we're similar in the fact of that creative in, right? And that's an amazing example of like, hey, this is a creative in to take one, I got here, get access here, and then this will compound over here, and then it becomes this flywheel of success.

So I love that, and I teach it all the time, it's awesome. Yeah, exactly. And so, for example, I became the number one podcaster on Castbox, which is the third largest player. And because I became so visible on Castbox and all those people knew why I was, then all of a sudden I started getting popular on Apple because if for some reason they wanted to listen on Apple, they would go find my show.

And it was all because I started on Castbox. So basically you can get to where you want to be, but you can kind of circumvent around what's going on. So what would you say as some like say, that's a pretty incredible journey and way around about way of getting there, right? And it's like, what would you say if someone was launching a podcast today or has a podcast and it's not going the way that maybe they want? Is there any sort of tip,

tips or tactics you found or is it really it just boils down to, hey, you need a big brand, you need a big fall and you need an amazing tribe, you need amazing guests like, you need tips or tricks. You need amazing guests like any tips or tricks of people that you found. 100% 100%. So there's really too many ways. It's you have money or you don't have money ways. So we can start with the I don't have money ways, right? So the I don't have money ways is you need to understand that people who listen to podcasts are in the podcast apps. So your number one job is to make sure that you're visible in the podcast apps. It's not about social media ads. It's not about how big your social following is.

There are thousands of podcasters out there that have a huge social media following and who have a crappy low ranking podcast that gets no downloads. And it's because they don't understand that people on social media, 50% of people on social media don't even listen to podcasts. And most people will listen to like one or two a month. You want the rabid podcast fans that are rotating seven podcasts and listening to them every single day and those people are only found in the apps and they're found in the apps that they're already using. Okay. So you want to think about ways to reach them. So one of the things that you can do is guess on other podcasts and you can do research on chartable and you can see who's in your niche. You can, there's many different apps

where you can kind of see who is on at your caliber in terms of where you're ranking, where it would be an equal swap. And you guys can guess on each other's shows, that's one way to be visible in the apps. You can also run commercials on other podcasts and even trade commercials. So for example, Jordan Harbinger is my mentor.

His podcast is about five to 10 times bigger than mine. It's what he's been doing it for 10 years longer than me, right? And so because of that, we do commercial swaps. We're all do eight commercials and he'll do two for me. And we don't pay each other any money. And we can track it and see how many people listened and converted. And we just keep doing that until we don't feel like it's meaningful anymore. And so you can basically coordinate swaps even with podcasters that are bigger than you. You just need to figure out what the impressions should be per podcaster and

make sure you guys have equal impressions that you're delivering for the swaps. One other way, if you don't have money, you've got to have a key were a very searchable name. So I've seen a lot of podcasters who are pretty mediocre, nothing special, no social media following and have thousands of downloads. And it's because they've got a lot of podcasters who are pretty mediocre, nothing special, no social media following, and have thousands of downloads, and it's because they've got a great name. So like self-help daily, you know, self-helping is another one that I just met. Investor, millennial investor, right? These podcasters are not doing any ads, they're not spending any money, they're not good at social media,

it's just because they have a good keyword that people are searching in the apps and so for me It was sort of an uphill battle with young and profiting. That's why I didn't see success right away because nobody was searching young and profiting I should have called it young entrepreneur, right? If I was if I had known better back then so I think it's important to make sure you have keyword in your name If you're just starting out you don't have a lot of money now I can make anybody a number one If you're just starting out, you don't have a lot of money. Now, I can make anybody a number one podcaster with investment because it's just like any other game.

If you do meaty buying, you're going to get visibility. So all these apps that I was talking about, Castbox, Player of M, Podbean, Apple's really the only one that doesn't have it. They have featured placements that you can pay for. You can get banner ads in the apps. And you can just pay for that and get visibility. And they will guarantee you like, you'll get guaranteed 5,000 subscribers. And there's a specific

great or a certain amount of impressions. And you can track which ones are doing well, which ones are retaining your listeners the most. And then basically pour money into that. And so there's lots of different tactics that you can do with all these players to actually grow your visibility within the apps. And then also get commercials on huge podcasts, which basically shortcuts you to to the apps. And then also get commercials on a huge podcast, which basically shortcuts you to the top. Yep. Yeah, I love that. So I'm an ad skyer, right? So I actually teach all my members. I'm like, Hey, pay to play. If you want to do organic and stuff, great. But I think that takes a lot of time. And I'm like, if you have big goals, times, you know, biggest barrier

rights, is if you can pay 10, 20, 30, K and collapse a year, like you can make that decision to me, 30 grants to say a year in my life, I'm gonna make $2 million from it next year, right? So say I wanna pay to play, you know, what do they, I always teach with Facebook at say $3,000 a month, $100 a day is a great test budget and others if that is ROI and you can scale, right? So what would you say on this side, like paying to play on the the app side, like for 5,000

or 3,000 a month, can they get some good banner ads or do a sponsor show or are they talking like 10s, 1,000 grand? What is a good, you know, a decent way, right? To start. Yeah. So most of the podcast players, they range anywhere from like $2,000 to $7,000 for their campaigns, and they won't let you do it more than once a month. So I would say a good test budget would be like 7K, and maybe you could do like two players that you're focusing on.

And again, I would concentrate on leverage. It's much more powerful to be like, I'm the number one podcaster on CastBox, than it is to have like, you know, 500 subscribers on all these random apps, right? So focus on one app that's working for you and keep buying it over and over again. And honestly, the more money that you have and the more investment that you can make, the faster you're gonna grow and the more quicker you're gonna monetize

because you can only really monetize the podcast once you're getting around 20,000 downloads a week. None of the agencies are like, no, it's gonna really pay attention to you until you get those sort of downloads. And then once you're making 20,000 downloads a week, you can turn around and make 20, 30 grand a month on your podcast. So you can make a lot of that money back very quickly.

So for my clients, I usually recommend, hey, let's invest 40 grand in four months. And then I'll start making you 20 grand a month after that and you can keep going with growing in or not, you know? Yeah, and I mean, look, the 40K, if it's a business unlike me, I probably make 400 grand for the backend, right, from the actual business side, from the mem, the people coming in our ecosystem. So it's like YouTube, I see these guys get in, you know, 50 grand a month from the paydats, I'm like, hey, if I had to follow in line, you on YouTube, I'd be making a million dollars, right? So I'm from that.

So I think there's like ROI from the ads side, but even if you have products and services in line with your audience, there's way bigger ROI if you know how to convert them and send them, right? 100%. I was just talking about just from a pure CPM sponsorship, you could make your money back. But if you add courses and stuff.

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to revolutionize your business. If you're a regular listener, you probably know that I use Shopify to sell my LinkedIn secrets masterclass. Setting up my Shopify store just took me a few days. I didn't have to worry about my website and how I was gonna collect payments and how I was going to trigger abandoned cart emails and all these things that Shopify does for me was just a click of a button even setting up my chat bot was just a click

of a button. It was so easy to do. Like I said, just took a couple of days and so it just allowed me to focus on my actual product and making sure my LinkedIn Masterclass was the best it could be. And I was able to focus on my marketing. So Shopify really, really helped me make sure that my Masterclass was going to be a success right off the bat and enabled focus and focus is everything when it comes to entrepreneurship. With Shopify single dashboard, I can manage my orders and my payments from anywhere in the world. And like I said, it's one of my favorite things to do every day is check my Shopify dashboard. It is a rush of dopamine to see all those blinking lights around the world showing me where everybody is logging on on the

site. I love it. I highly recommend it. Shopify is a platform that I use every single day and it can take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com such profiting. Again, go to Shopify.com such profiting all lower case to take your business to the next level today. Again, that Shopify.com such profiting shop. Find out calm such profiting all lower case. This is possibility powered by Shopify. So you would say so you would say a better route just to just to kind of give options is

they could have obviously the organic we talked about and then sponsoring it. Would you start sponsoring other top shows or would you try and actually pay for the banner placements on these other places where they can actually tune in, which is if you had a preference over those two or? So I like in-app media buying because a lot of the times you get a guaranteed number of subscribers. If you can monitor the retention and you're good at paying attention to your analytics, you can see which ones are really working and lean into that. And that way it's more guaranteed with the podcasters, if you're

going to go, I would test, right? So my recommendation is always to take like five shows. You've got to do at least three commercials because repetition is really important in the podcast world. So don't just do one commercial, do three to five mid rolls on those podcasts. You can use a platform like chartable to track it and see the conversion rates. And then buy more into the podcast that are actually converting and pay attention to it, because at some point it's going to start having declining returns and you'll want to pick a new podcast. But a lot of people will do like poor money on just because you know it's embarrassed or whatever it is, but maybe it's not a fit for your audience and you don't want to waste your money.

So you could do test budgets and then lean into it. Whereas the apps is more like you'll get a get usually guaranteed number of impressions of subscribers and it's like less risk involved. And they can just go to the apps and obviously get price ranges there. And what like a Tim Ferriss or a top 10 or top 20, are they charging, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars for mid rolls or what are people looking at there if they're trying to go that route. So everything in the podcast world is based on CPM. So it's cost per 1000 downloads and

usually it's anywhere from $25 to $45 depending on the niche of the show. Business entrepreneurship shows with like higher caliber listeners are going to cost more than like a Joe Rogan, you know, mass audience show, right? And so it really just depends on the size of the show. You always want to try to shoot for the lowest CPM. So if you can get a show, the bigger the show actually, also the lower the CPMs because it's just so much volume. So you want to try to get anywhere from like I say a 20 to $25 CPM depending on how the show is. That would be a really good deal. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. And actually, you know, we see Facebook ads, you're looking at $50 in the

business world, 10 to $30 in like fitness and broader ranges. So that's a, you're very similar prices. So it's fascinating to try and we've had some members do well actually, promoting their high-sicket services when even when they don't have a podcast, actually sponsoring podcasts that have their avatar. So it's fascinating to see all the different ways

you can run ads, right? For a lot of my members that are just on Facebook right now. Yeah, there's so many other options out there. I feel like podcasts ads are so, they're so good at converting because people just love the host and trust the host. And if the host is really careful about what they advertise

and they're really clear about what their audience likes, the trust is there and the conversion is there. Good, love it. So next, next last part, I just want to know, like, you know, we've talked about LinkedIn, you're crushing that, you've helped hundreds of people there, thousands of people there, same with podcasts, right? But how did you become successful? Bill, such a strong brand, like, you know, our whole theme is the red life and his bill on taking the red pill, building a life of your dreams, getting out of the norm and society. So talk to us more about the mindset

and the decisions and who you are as a person that allowed that to happen and what you'd say to other people that are trying to make that happen. Yeah, I think the reason why I got so big on LinkedIn and podcasting is because I put in the work like I was so consistent, I showed up every single day on LinkedIn.

I showed up every single day on LinkedIn, I showed up every single week on my podcast, even when I had no fans, right? And so people were just so attracted to the mission. Like I said, when I started my podcast, by episode two, I had my first volunteers, now a business partner, by episode eight, I had 10 volunteers in a Slack channel.

And for two years, I had 20 people working for free for me, that's how obsessed they were with the mission, right? And so people just really aligned to the fact that I was raw. I documented my journey, my process. I never held back any information. I just was helping people as much as I could. I never asked for a dollar. Like it was two years into it before I ever sold anything.

And I was just all about building community. And so I have like a really rabid fan base, especially on LinkedIn and my podcast because I didn't sell anything to them. And I really was just all about providing value and actually monetizing wasn't my first goal. It was really about helping people and being a positive voice for my generation. And so I think a lot of people were attracted to that. Um, and then in terms of like personal branding, I always just make sure that I tell how it is. I talk about my failures.

I talk about my ups and downs. I talk about if I'm having a problem and I'm really open with my community about what's going on in my life. And that makes them feel like I'm an old friend. And like that's personal branding 101. I've got fans in my comments that are like fighting for me as if they've known me for Ten years if there's like a troll on my LinkedIn post because they feel like they actually know me Because I've done such a good job about like consistent messaging And making sure that I have values and really aligned to those values And I've got a certain tone that I use and I always align to that tone and it makes people

Like think that you're an old friend that they knew you so well. So really branding is consistency and that's what I've really focused on over the years. Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's a great message. People because we've talked about the LinkedIn. What are the, you know, everyone wants to learn the hacks, right? And the step by step, which I want to try and provide. And you're the same with the podcast. How do we expedite it? How do we speed it up? But you know, I've been doing business for 12 plus years, selling online for 20 years, basically since the start of the internet, when I was 11 years old on eBay, and it's like,

you can't replace that, right? The hacks and the tips and the tricks speed things up, but the consistency they're not giving up, the being authentic, right? And knowing your voice is like some of the foundations that you have to build on, but most people want to skip. Yeah, exactly. And that's not how you build something that's word of mouth good, right? That's always my goal.

I don't want to do paid ads, right? I'm not your, your paid ads person. I'm the opposite. Everything that I've ever done, pretty much other than media buying in the podcast world, which there's really no other way to really get to the top at this point. I always just struck with content marketing, word of mouth, organic reach.

And that means it's it's understanding your voice identity, your visual identity, and also understanding the algorithms and how to work with the algorithms like we were just talking about. Then you can start to pull people in and not have to push ads on them to bring them into your community. People will come to you and tell their friends. And to me, that's like the best way to grow any sort of brand online is for other people to sell you and become your advocate. Yeah, the ads, I mean, for a lot of, like, the way I see it is it's like, that's the, that can be the volume. And then all that volume, you'll get a percent that will become your tri, right?

Long-term and organic is much higher quality, right? Like, you know, they're gonna stay with you longer now, they're gonna be wrong. I feel an amazing massive trived through paid ads, but it's like the 10% and the 90% is transactional, right? They come in and they buy a product, they learn from it, use it and they go, oh, which is fine, let's pay that.

So, you know, I've always gone a different route because my goal's to be a billionaire They come in the buy product, they learn from it, use it and move on. Which is fine, let's pay that. I've always gone a different route because my goal's to be a billionaire and it's always been very big. I do believe to be a billionaire, if you're building a massive company, that if you look at every billion dollar company, they run major adspan.

So I was always like, I wanna figure that out, be the king of it because I think that's the fuel to the fire, right? There's, you know, there's the gasoline, but you've got to have the foundations, right? And you're amazing at that. And obviously done that so, so well. Yeah, thank you so much.

And to your point, like paid ads, there's going to be a point in time where I'm going to have to be like, Rudy, I need your help. We got to take things through the next level. When you get to, when I'm going to, I don't know where you're at, revenue eyes with a lot of people, they get to 10, 5, 10 million, and then I'm like, hey, when you wanna go to 100 million, you can probably still do it organically if you're amazing,

and you do an amazing platform, and you can grow fast, and you've got an amazing tribe, but it's like, there's also, as you know, there's a lot of your tribe that don't see a post every day, right? And it's not your fault, but it's just like, that's the algorithm, because the algorithm's the billion dollar brands, the social platforms know that, hey, we'll give them 5% reach,

but if they own the other 95% while they're gonna have to pay us to do that. Right? So, there's a point where it's like, hey, it makes sense to add, see, pay now to reach the other 95% just so I can keep feeding them the amazing content the products they want to buy Boba-Bob, right? Yeah 100% and of course at some point I'm gonna exhaust everybody on LinkedIn

But I'll have the funds to then go to other platforms and use ads to grow there. Yeah, no, I love it So we're coming close to time So I always ask people to finish like you know again We're we're build on living the's always asked people to finish like, you know, again, we're building the red life, building a life of your dreams. What would you say to someone that's like choosing between the blue and the red pill? They want to make the decision to take control of their life, build this dream life, but they're on the edge or they can't quite do it or they're struggling, they're failing.

What would you wash your waz of wisdom and inspiration after all these years building something amazing? So I would say number one, nobody's going to do it for you. You need to take control of your life, right? So one of the biggest things and my come-up journey that I faced is gatekeepers telling me now, you know, I'm a young woman, you know, I got rejected by Trust Hill Radio, satellite radio, TV, and it wasn't until I was like, you know what? I'm gonna start my own things or my own podcasts that I blew up and really accomplished my dreams because I kept knocking on doors,

thinking that somebody's gonna, you know, if I work hard, if I work for free, maybe they'll give me a chance. And they didn't, because nobody's looking out for you by yourself. And so what I'd say is, if a gatekeeper's telling you know, make sure that you think about how you can do it on your own and take the steps to create your own asset and try to go about it and don't take no for an answer. Figure

out how you can do it. The other thing that I'll say is that a lot of people are stuck on the outcome. For example, for a long time, I was like, I want to be on hot and any seven, the radio station when really all I wanted to be was a positive voice for my generation. And there was multiple ways to get there. So it's like always think about what is a Not what you want to be who do you want to be right and think about that and go towards that And there's probably multiple avenues that you can take to reach that ultimate goal rather than being so singular about This is exactly what I want this is exactly what I want to be It's more about who you want to be what do you want to to represent? And that's going to always evolve, right? And so I would say that will help you broaden up your goals so that you can go out and accomplish your dreams. The last thing I'll say is that you got to

believe that life is limitless. You have to believe that anything is possible. If you don't, you're not really going to get like extraordinarily successful in my opinion. And the other thing I'll say is that you have to believe in yourself. Right? So you have to believe that you've got the skills and the talents to actually accomplish what you're trying to do. Yeah, I love that. We have a banner that's all over my famous or favorite saying is everything's possible when you open your mind and you know my back story is I grew up with a world-class athletes as parents. So I got to see that as a kid and my

superpower is believing in it, right? As a kid and growing up that way. And I only realized now how powerful that is because I thought it was normal. But then you know, you meet most people and they don't. So it's like, how do you find mentors put yourself in an environment, listen to podcasts like this, like you will spend time with those people that are going to give you that belief system, right? Not only give you the step by step, but give you the belief system that you can be more, you can do more, and that's what living the red lights all about, this podcast is about,

your podcast is about, and it's about taking your life to the next level. So thank you so much for coming on. This is awesome and inspiring. And how do they learn more about you? Tell everyone that's going to be geeking out on LinkedIn about the master classes and the courses and the trainings you have. I'm going to attend and be taking notes with the team to implement. Tell us about that just to wrap up. Yeah, sure. So I've a LinkedIn master class. And you guys, I'll actually create a code called Rudy, if you guys want 35% off

the class. And so you can go to yapmedia.io slash course. So it's a two day life course with me. It's about 10 hours. And I go through how to create a personal brand, a voice identity, a visual identity. I talk about copywriting hacks, psychology of design, go through the entire LinkedIn algorithm. That's like three hours of class engagement hacks. And then you guys can join my mastermind. I put you in my engagement pod. I run most of the influencer engagement pods on LinkedIn. And it really just helped you hack the platform. I've gotten like 10 out of 10 ratings.

So again, you can go to yapmedia.io slash course and use code Rudy for 35% off, which is gonna be our highest discount. The next class is in February, but we're gonna be doing it every month. So it's February 22nd to the 23rd. I also have an agency. So if you're more of like an influencer, you've got a team, your CEO, if you're interested

in social media or podcast production services, you can go to yet media.io. Great. Yeah. I love it. I can't imagine the podcast. Yes. Yeah. We go. We go the podcast going on. I can't imagine 10 hours. Right. This was 30 minutes of awesomeness. So 10 hours next level stuff. I'm excited to send my team and really build it out for us because it's been on our radar for a long time. And I again just really appreciate you coming on. I'm excited to be on yours and and give some of that knowledge back to your listener base as well. So my listener base, I know they'll really thrive from this and the strategies plus the mindset as well, we're all about overhead. So thank you and thanks for everyone listening in and

remember keep living the red light. Take care. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Ruben, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben Podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights

from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time, energy, or money. Suggestions such as follow the one-minute rule. Choose a one-word theme for the year,

or design your summer. We also feature segments like, know yourself better, where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever? And every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick, easy shortcut to more happiness.

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