Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Jenna Kutcher: Protect Your Peace, Build Multiple Income Streams: Courses, Podcasts, Airbnb & More! | E295

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Jenna Kutcher left her corporate job to start a photography business. But by the time she had scaled it to six figures, she was burnt out. Bent on finding a more sustainable path, she started several side hustles. Today, she runs a multimillion-dollar empire. In this episode, Jenna reveals how she diversified her revenue streams to earn more while maintaining a balanced life. She breaks down everything, from affiliate marketing and coaching to hosting on Airbnb. Jenna Kutcher is an entrepreneur, podcaster, and online marketing expert. She hosts The Goal Digger Podcast and is the author of How Are You, Really? In this episode, Hala and Jenna will discuss: - Jenna’s transition from corporate America to entrepreneurship - The importance of protecting personal peace and family time - Scaling your business with online courses - Her system for generating seven figures through affiliate marketing - The viral post that launched Jenna’s influencer career - Why email marketing trumps social media - Jenna’s fulfilling experience with Airbnb - Running an Airbnb with your existing space - Pinterest marketing for entrepreneurs with a small following - And other topics…  Jenna Kutcher is an entrepreneur, podcaster, author, and online marketing expert who turned a $300 Craigslist camera into a seven-figure empire. She hosts The Goal Digger Podcast, which provides practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs. She is also a successful social media influencer and author of the bestselling book How Are You, Really? Jenna works with creative entrepreneurs to build profitable, sustainable, and authentic businesses.  Connect With Jenna: Jenna’s Website: https://jennakutcher.com/  Jenna’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennakutcher/  Jenna’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jennakutcher  Jenna’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennakutcher/  Jenna’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenna.kutcher/  Jenna’s Podcast, The Goal Digger Podcast:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-goal-digger-podcast/id1178704872  Resources Mentioned: Airbnb: https://www.airbnb.com   LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast’ for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course.   Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify  Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting  Facet - For a limited time Facet will waive $250 enrollment fee for new annual members! Visit facet.com/profiting for details. Kajabi - Get a free 30-day trial to start your business at Kajabi.com/PROFITING  LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at linkedin.com/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's Services - yapmedia.io/

I've just realized that money isn't the answer. Like, times in my business where I've earned the most money, I've been the most miserable. And I just feel like there's this threshold of, like, where do I get more joy? How do I derive joy? Like, what does peace look like? Like, when I go to bed at the end of the night, how do I truly rest? Jenna Kutcher

is the one who decided she did not want to be defined by just one thing. And she has more than one million followers on Instagram and is the host of the top rated podcast Goldegger with more than 70 million downloads and counting. Peace is so expensive and life is so short. And I definitely am not anti hustle culture because I do believe hustle is required to get the dream off the ground no matter what the dream is. But if hustle is the only way that you can operate and sustain what you're building, that is not a business. Like you are building a prison for yourself. And I've watched so many people who have really successful businesses and really lousy

lives. Like they are rich in their bank accounts and empty in relationships. There's this quote that I heard that totally changed my mentality and it was. Hey everyone, welcome to the show. We've got an exciting episode in store for you today. We are live in an Airbnb location, which is coincidental because we actually talked about Airbnb in this episode. Today I'm interviewing Jenna Kutcher. She's the host of the Gold Digger podcast. She's a bestselling author and she's also an entrepreneur of many different businesses. So we're going to talk about all the different ways she makes money from her courses to affiliate

marketing to podcast sponsorships to hosting a property on Airbnb. I absolutely love this conversation. Jenna is one of my close friends and she's so smart. She's so brilliant. I can't wait to share it with you all. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Jenna Kutcher. Welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you.

I mean, let's talk about money, but money is such a taboo topic, especially with women. And so we're going to kind of dive off the deep end together. Yes. Let's do it. So first of all, tell me, what was the first way that you started to make a lot of money? When did it all start to really come together for you? So when I was 23, I worked in corporate America and I had a great job, but I very quickly realized that climbing the corporate ladder was just not for me. And it is an amazing option for a lot of people. It just didn't resonate with my soul.

There was just this feeling of, I've got to figure something else out. So I started as a wedding photographer. Most people know my story. I bought a $300 camera on Craigslist, ended up starting a wedding photography business, taught myself everything. And within three years I was earning six figures, which at the time was more than I had ever even dreamed of, right? In my corporate job, I was making $50,000 a year. I felt so rich. Making six figures felt like this amount that was impossible. And when I was growing my business, I was also experiencing burnout.

And I had grown so quickly, which was such a blessing, but I also just hit this place where I was like, I can't imagine doing this for the next five, 10, 15, 20 years, there's gotta be a different way. And I committed to figuring out a different way through loss. And I shared this story many times, but when my husband and I finally decided that we wanted to start a family,

it didn't happen as easily for us as it does for other people. And I know a lot of people experience this, but we went through two miscarriages. And I was planning my pregnancies around my photography business, because I was shooting in the summer and I had to figure out how was this going to work.

And when I had my second loss, I had to show up and shoot a wedding the next day. And I was like, there has to be a different way. Like I built this amazing business, but if I don't show up and shoot, I don't get paid. And there's got to be a different way. And so I committed then and there in this moment of agony of, I will figure this out. And I remember around that time, I heard this statistic, the average millionaire has seven revenue streams. And at the time, I had one. And I was like, how do we figure this out?

Like, what could this even look like? It felt so crazy. And so I started many different side hustles. Do you want to dive into them? Okay. So my first side hustle was I became a watercolor artist. Do you know this? No. So my mother-in-law was an elementary art teacher,

and in the basement of her house, she had all of these art supplies. In my season of burnout, I was like, I need to do something to connect back to my creativity. At first, my photography was my creativity and then it became my job. So I went home with all these watercolor supplies. I started painting every day. I forced myself to sit in a chair

and paint for 20 minutes a day. And I started sharing these paintings on the internet and people were like, can I buy that? And I ended up figuring out a way to scan these watercolor art prints and sell them online. And pretty soon we were paying our mortgage with the print revenue. Your first sort of passive income revenue stream.

Totally, because that was what made me realize I could create something once and sell it a bunch of times. So it started as a joke and it turned into something where I was like, wait a minute, we're onto something. Also around that time was when I had realized after hitting six figures that I was happier when I was working less. And I had hit this point,

and I think a lot of entrepreneurs hit this point where in the beginning you have to trade time for money. There's really no other way around it. That is the hustle that is required. But at some point when you start to get the money, you recognize that I will spend money to get back my time. And I'd hit that point in my photography business and I was like, you know what?

I will go back to earning $50,000 a year if I can have a life. And so I committed to booking half of the weddings that I had been shooting and I said, I'm gonna figure something else out. And so that's when I started learning about online courses. And I had scaled a business from zero to 100K in three years. I knew something that a lot of people didn't.

And so I started mentoring other local photographers, having them come into this little condo we lived in and I'd walk them through pricing, marketing, social media, like all the business stuff because I'm like, these people are so good at their craft. They don't know how to like sell it. And so I started coaching and then I started looking into online courses. And that's where the business that people see today started to form, but it was years in the making. I love that, it's so inspiring.

So in terms of your courses, how did you first figure out how to go from one to one to one to many? Because that's really the secret. It's how do you take what you do to individuals and then make it possible that many people can take this course? Like how did you first start to figure that world out? You know it's kind of funny because I don't know if I've ever drawn the parallel of making

a watercolor print, scanning it, figuring out one-to-one or one-to-many. Yeah. And that is exactly what online education is. And it was so funny because I ended up coaching five local photographers, and they all had the same questions. And all of a sudden, I found myself, I'm like, I am a broken record. I'm teaching them the same things. I'm showing them the same pricing guides.

I'm walking through the same things. And that was when I really started to discern. There are trends and questions that everybody has. And that is the type of content you want to put into an online course. And I am so grateful that I took the time to sit down with people face to face, hear their struggles, understand, well, what am I actually doing different? Because I think that so often we are so close to our own genius that we think everybody knows this.

Yeah. Surely this is easy for everybody. And so when I started to identify these trends, I was like, oh my gosh, I can teach branding and I can teach social media and I can teach pricing and I can teach email communication and all of these things. And so I created my first online course after taking an online course.

So I was like, I'm gonna buy an online course and figure out, okay, how did they deliver it? How was it recorded? How was it like spread out over the weeks? Yes, my secret sauce is like reverse engineering. I see an end result. As a wedding photographer, I would see the finished shot and I would think, how did the photographer pose these people this way? What were the cues that they gave them? What was the lighting? And I reverse engineered course creation because I was like, I can figure

this out. I know I can. The people that can take apart a car and figure out how to put it back together, I can't do that. But when it comes to digital stuff, I'm so good at that. And so online courses cracked my life open in such a beautiful way. But it did, it allowed me to reach people outside of where we lived in this tiny village in Wisconsin.

And it allowed me to connect with other photographers who were struggling with the same thing so that they could really focus on the art and their craft. Yeah, so I really resonate with this because I started my first course a year ago. And at the time, I didn't really realize that I had a course under my belt. I have a social media agency

and it's very expensive to work with us. You're actually one of my social kinds. And so it's like $10,000 a month minimum to work with us. I'd have lots of people coming to me being like, I really want your help, but I can't afford your services. I really want your help, but I can't afford your services. Then I realized that this agency that I'm building,

in order to get more clients, every time I get three more clients, I have to hire five more people. I don't want to have like a 3000 person organization. That's a lot of stress on me. So I was like, what can I do to sort of lay it all out and the same trainings that I give my team, the same checklists I give them. How can I take what I give my team to service my clients and

then turn it into a class? And then I did that and I just used everything that we already had. So the course was very fast to put together because I think a lot of people don't realize that if you have an agency, you probably have a course because whatever you're doing, you can package it up and teach other people how to do what you do to service your clients. And I feel like a lot of people don't realize that. The other thing with courses is that it just gives you so much content to then create an audience and attract an audience.

So for example, I have like a two-day master class on LinkedIn and my team literally just goes to the slides that I created and then creates posts. You know what I mean? Because they have all the content. I've written it all down. So I'd love to understand how did you end up becoming an influencer because you've got like a million plus followers on Instagram You're huge on Pinterest too How did that piece come about was the podcast the first thing that kicked that all off it all grew? Super organically until it didn't when I was a wedding photographer I realized really quickly that there were a million wedding photographers in my area that were really talented.

And the only thing that made me different was me, because we were all delivering a very similar finished product. And so even in the early days, and I mean, this is like, oh, gee, Instagram, we're talking here. Like when we used to use those weird Valencia filters, I would just share my life. And I would just share who I was and what I was struggling with. I would share working from home with no makeup on. Like this is the reality of it.

And it was so interesting because when I first became a wedding photographer, I just hid behind my work. It was like this safe spot. I figured surely everyone only wants to see my work. And I remember years and years and years ago polling my audience of like, what are your favorite posts? And it was all personal.

And I was like, what is this? Fast forward a few years, we went to Hawaii and I wanted to do an experiment and I love experimenting. I am like a huge experimenter. And so I said, for 30 days, I'm gonna only post me. And this is at a time when I had been hiding behind my work for years. And my engagement skyrocketed.

My confidence in myself grew. My connection to my audience grew. I was so fascinated by it because I was like, this seems like the least interesting thing of what I'm doing. I was just sharing my life. It really made me realize people need to connect with people. I never set out to be an influencer. I really wanted to just continue to grow and share.

And I really have realized over the last few years, my dream is to help women build businesses they don't hate and build lives that they love. And I have been taking people on this journey, not as I have figured this all out, but like I am still learning, I. But like, I am still learning. I am still growing. I'm still figuring this out.

And so when I started doing social media collaborations and social media promotions and different things like that, it just felt so natural because I am the kind of person where I'm like, oh, my God, have you tried this new lip gloss? Or like this skin cleanser is life changing. Like when I go on a girls date with my girlfriends, by the end of the day, I've dropped 10 links of things that I'm just telling them about because I'm like, if this works for me, this could work for you. I just love not gatekeeping, whether it's business or beauty products or whatever that

is. And so that was just such an interesting facet for me to realize people care about the business, yes, but they also care about what's happening behind the business and what's fueling it. And so that was interesting. We did have a viral moment. So I grew very organically. I felt like I knew every single follower.

It felt that way. And we had a moment go viral. And it was a photo of me and my husband on the beach in Hawaii. And I was talking about body image. It was the funniest post because I never expected it to go viral. I think that's what happens with viral posts.

I was clapping back at someone who had said, how can a woman like you get a man like him? My husband is very fit, he's very in shape. At the time I was curvier, I had been going through miscarriages and lost. My body had been through so much. I was just angry and I was like, who are you to say this?

We have been together for a decade. He has loved me through every pound, every pimple, like everything. And that post blew up and overnight, we got hundreds of thousands of followers and blessing and a curse, right? Double-edged sword because wow, this is amazing. But also like, who are these people and why are they here?

Yeah. And what are they watching for? That's when I first found out about you. Yes. Because I was starting to podcast and I was growing here? Yeah. And what are they watching for? That's when I first found out about you. Yes. Because I was starting to podcast, and I was growing popularity in podcasts. And then I remember hearing about Jenna Kutcher. And your likeliness was so tied up with body image.

And so you were the body image girl that was spreading body positivity. And that's what you were known for. Was that hard to sort of get out of that box? Because now you're out of that box. Well it was so confusing because I had talked about body image for years. I think it's a lifelong journey to learn how to love yourself and I don't think it ever ends. And so the fact that one random post goes off and then here I am running a business, teaching entrepreneurs and now

all these people are following, commenting about my body, wanting more of that content that I'm not monetizing because I didn't want to monetize it. It was very confusing. And again, it was such a blessing and a curse because so many people resonated with the message and it connected with them and they felt seen and they felt understood. And at the same point too, as a creator, it's like, what do I do with this? with the message and it connected with them and they felt seen and they felt understood. And at the same point too as a creator, it's like, what do I do with this? And as a business owner, where do we go from here? Like I'm not going to sell a course about body image.

And so it was a really interesting time. And I think that I just did my best to like stay very true to myself, stay very grounded in the message to be clear of like, here's what you can expect if you stick around here, because this isn't going to become this type of account. And so yeah, it was very interesting. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors. Young and Profiters, if you listen to my podcast, you know that I got a lot of ads.

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We're landing a ton of huge deals. And my team just can't keep up. I knew we needed to hire new employees to support my team, but I didn't wanna waste my time sifting through candidates who aren't good fits for my company. That's why I let Indeed do a lot of this heavy lifting for me. Indeed is the powerful hiring platform

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Again, that's Indeed.com slash profiting. And support the show by saying you heard about it on Young and Profiting podcast. Again, it's Indeed.com slash profiting to get your $75 credit. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need, indeed. Young and profiteers, it's never been a better time to be an entrepreneur. With inspiration at our fingertips and powerful tools at our disposal,

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That's all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash profiting now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash profiting now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash profiting. Again, Shopify.com slash profiting and that's all lowercase don't forget it young and profitors. I wanna dig into the course thing and how it lended itself so nicely to you doing affiliates. Yeah.

Because something that a lot of entrepreneurs don't realize is that once you figure out how to promote something well, you can then just take that and replicate it in a million different ways. Yes. And I was even talking about this yesterday, me and Jenna were at the IAB upfronts. We were both very integrated into this big podcasting event for advertisers. And I was telling the advertisers, YAP Media, my network,

we're all business owners and so we understand how to promote our own products and services and then we turn that into podcast sponsorship. Yes. That's what I've been doing. You've been doing that with affiliate marketing. I'd love for you to walk through how do you actually promote your courses and then what is the relationship to that,

and then how you started affiliate marketing. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love affiliate marketing. I know. I don't do any of it. Oh my gosh, people. So we do seven figures in affiliate marketing each year, over seven figures. If people are wondering, are you getting pennies to the dollar? This can be a very lucrative thing,

especially if you don't have a ton of offers that you are selling on your own. Affiliate marketing is literally just recommending someone else's product and getting a commission when people buy it. And so if you have gotten people's trust in what you are recommending with anything and they do trust you, they will follow you

wherever you lead them to in a beautiful way. I love affiliate marketing, whether it is skincare, whether it is jeans, whether it is another online course, I just think it's so powerful. The reason why I love it is because I am not an expert in everything. Very clearly, I'm not an expert in all the things.

I want to recommend things and people that I love to the people that I love. I am a natural connector. My greatest joy in life is connecting people that I love to each other, connecting people to products that they love. So one of the things that I've realized is I can sell my own stuff. That's wonderful.

But what does it look like when I partner up with brands that I love and with people that I love and help promote their business? We recently partnered with one of my dear friends who I've literally known for almost a decade and she's my copywriter and she has an amazing course. And I was like, Ashlyn, let me talk about your course. Your work has changed my life and so many people could benefit from this and I am not a pro copywriter and it transformed her business. It changed her launch. It made her show up differently.

My audience was like there. We had thousands of people sign up for a master class. And so it's like so fun for me because I get to support the people and brands that I love. I get a commission from what I'm selling and I get to kind of experiment with different marketing strategies because there's less skin in the game and I get to be more creative of like, what does this look like?

But go into the nitty gritty, like, what are you doing? I know you're using many chat automation. Are you leveraging an email list? Just tell me, like, what are you doing? Okay, you want me to give you the lead line. So if somebody's listening to this and you have a podcast, a very natural way to do this is to have a podcast interview and to be able to tie it to somebody's listening to this and you have a podcast, a very natural way to do this is to have a podcast interview and to be able to tie it to somebody's offer.

That's what we did when we did my LinkedIn course. Yes, and so just naturally integrating what that person is an expert in and inviting people with a call to action at the end of the podcast. If you have an email list, sending out emails about, hey, this person that I trust, this is my experience with them,

this is how they've transformed things for me, this is why you should trust them or join their free masterclass. You have Instagram, sharing about it on Instagram. So we basically built this almost like flywheel where we could have a guest on our podcast, we could send out a couple emails, I could do an Instagram live with them

and a few Instagram posts, and that's honestly it. And they take care of the rest. And it's people that I trust that are going to serve my audience well at the highest level. And then if it's the right offer for them, they'll take it. So now you've got millions of followers. Take us back to when you didn't have millions of followers.

It was a long ago. How would you promote something then? Maybe you've got a couple thousand followers, but you're really smart. You already make money doing something really well. Maybe you have a job and you do something really well. Maybe you have a company, you do something well, but you just don't have a lot of followers. How would you then either sell courses or affiliate marketing? Yeah, I would say two channels.

Pinterest is huge. And I love Pinterest. That's a juicy one. No one talks about this. I know. Y'all, Pinterest is a search engine. It's not social media. And it's so crazy to me that people think that it is just a place to plan your dream life

but not do anything about it. When people go onto Pinterest, they are typing in recipes with sausage, makeup looks for work, or capsule wardrobes for vacation. Like people are typing in key words, and they're typing in stuff that you have created or work that you could create. Yeah.

So we get millions of views on Pinterest a month, just using the same strategies you would use for search engine optimization, just using keywords. That's so smart because nobody's doing that. Nobody's doing it. Especially for targeting women. optimization just using keywords. That's so smart because nobody's doing that. Nobody's doing it. Especially for targeting women. Yes, and the cool thing about that is

with Pinterest being a search engine, it's not a popularity contest. So unlike other social platforms, in order to get your work seen, you have to have a massive following because it is a search engine. If you are search engine oriented, you will be found. And so if you are someone listening to this

and you're like, great for you, I don't have a million followers or I don't have this. Pinterest is an amazing place. We use Pinterest to grow our email list. I look at marketing very distilled down. There are two focuses. The first primary focus is growing your email list. Why? It is an asset that you own.

It is something you can control. Social media is amazing. It is rented space. You do not own it, you asset that you own. It is something you can control. Social media is amazing. It is rented space. You do not own it, you can't control it. You are battling multiple algorithms. Your email list is a true asset. If you are somebody listening and you want to be in business three years from now,

five years from now, 10 years from now, you have to have an email list. That is the only way. Priority number one in marketing is an email list. Priority number two is any other platform that you are using, whether it is LinkedIn, YouTube, a podcast, Instagram, all of those efforts need to be getting people off of those platforms

and onto your email list. That is it. And it's so funny because we overcomplicate marketing and we're like, Instagram doesn't work. How are you using Instagram? Are you serving or are you selling? If you are selling, no wonder it doesn't work. And so your primary focus as a creator

is to start your email list and then any efforts that you have, the goal should be to get people off of whatever platform they're on and onto your list, because again, you own that. And you get them off of the platform by serving them and then retargeting them in the DMs to get them in your email list.

One of the biggest regrets I have is not starting my email list until just a couple of years ago I started it. And my favorite way, I don't know if you do this, to get emails is to do webinars. So I do these private Zoom webinars where I'll do LinkedIn training, sales trainings, I'm doing a mental health one

for entrepreneurs later this summer. And then I'll get a thousand, two thousand people registering. Boom, I got two thousand emails now and they opted in so I can communicate with them now. And there's so much clicks and conversions that happen in email. A lot of sales are happening on email. So I love it. Okay, so we talked about a number of your revenue streams already. We talked about your

water coloring business when you first started out. We talked about courses. We talked a little bit about podcasts and your different sponsorships and affiliate marketing. What other revenue streams do you have? So one thing that we are super passionate about is real estate. And I love real estate. I love property. I love looking at houses online. There's something about making a space, a home, and sharing it even, that just feels so powerful to me.

Years and years ago, Drew and I used to spend multiple months of the year in Maui. It was after I had had this revelation of like, I can build a business that can run while I rest. What would it look like if we spent a month on Maui and it was after I had had this revelation of like, I can build a business that can run while I rest. What would it look like if we spent a month on Maui and then it turned into two and three and we started to fall in love. But we were also spending a lot of money staying there. We would stay in Airbnbs each time and we

started to ask ourselves questions. We're spending a lot of money here. What would this look like? Could there be a possibility that we could do this ourselves? And I'll never forget a trip. My parents came to visit us and there was an open house. We were walking down the beach and we're like, I don't know, let's just pop in and look. And I started to really dream bigger. And at the time, my business was not at all the size that it is today. And I remember we went through this open house. I took the little flyer, and I went and sat

in a coffee shop and I started doing math. And I started thinking about, okay, how much are we spending a month when we're here? How much rent could we potentially earn? What would the expenses be? What are the HOAs? What does this look like? And one thing that's super interesting about Hawaii is there's a lot of different zoning. So there's apartment zone and there's hotel zone.

And the place that we were looking at used to be a hotel. It literally is zoned as a hotel. And I remember just thinking, this is so peculiar that this was an operating hotel and they have now created it into spaces that people could own. And I sat down in this coffee shop and started running the numbers and I'm like,

I think we can make this work. And I remember telling Drew, I am committed to eating ramen noodles for a year if we do this because we just loved being on the island and we loved having this space and the thought of doing it was just so exciting. We ended up putting in an offer. I will never forget, we flew back to the island, so we got this place.

It had been owned by this sweet, sweet old couple for years. We had one week to flip the unit and get it ready for Airbnb. And I literally thought we're gonna get divorced that week because we were painting and getting the couch and then the couch was too big, it couldn't fit through the door and all these silly things that we were like,

what did we get ourselves into? And it's ended up being one of the biggest blessings. We have hosted hundreds of couples over the years. We have had so many repeat guests come back to our space. And we have been able to create a community with our guests, with the team that helps us take care of our property. It's been so beautiful. We've also been able to give back so much to the community. We bought a place on the island because we care about the island. And so last year alone,

we donated over 30% of our profits to locals and to support them. We were able to help people in need when the devastating fire went through Lahaina. We opened up our doors, we housed locals for over two months in our unit, and we just took care of people. We used our network of other Airbnb hosts

and we said like, open your doors, we will pay all of your expenses, just get people in. And so it was amazing to see like, yes, it is a property and yes, it is this place where people can rent and stay, but we're also doing something a lot bigger with it. And that matters to me. Anything that I do has to have meaning. And I care so deeply about the why behind our work

that I wanna make sure that there's always facets of respect and community built into everything that we do. And so it's been beautiful. My parents were just down there and stayed. And to be able to see our space be shared and loved by people we love, but also taken care of our space be shared and loved by people we love but also taken care of by people we love and enjoyed by people we love. It just feels like this trifecta of blessings upon blessings. And I love property and I love the idea of putting together a space

where people are making lifelong memories because when we went to Hawaii it was like a bucket list trip. It was like some day in our lifetime I want to go to Hawaii. And the fact that like now we get to host people on their bucket list trips. How cool is that? I love that I could see like the joy exuding from you like it makes you so happy to host these people in your home and make your home beautiful. And something that people don't realize is that you don't necessarily need an investment property to do this. You could do this in your own home now. You can host a room in your house. Yeah, that is something that is coming up a lot lately.

And it's an amazing way for people to supplement their mortgages or to help pay their rent. And Drew and I experienced this years ago, and I feel like these people were ahead of the curve on this. But we went on an anniversary trip and we were driving along the coast of California and we rented a room in this bed and breakfast type house, but they owned a farm. And I was like, I want to see the alpaca. I want to check out the goats. I want to collect the eggs from the chickens. And it was a whole different life than what we were living. And I remember we like showed up and they greeted us at the door and they had a bottle

of wine chilled charcuterie boards out. And we sat and talked to them. We got to know about their life of living on this farm and why they were doing it. And it was such a cool experience where it opened my eyes up of like, yeah, it doesn't have to be a whole house. You don't have to buy a condo. You can literally do this wherever you are and start to share your space in such a meaningful way.

We'll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors. So something else that's really popular now is working remotely. So many people can work from anywhere now. And so I imagine that if you explore it and it's possible, you can just put your apartment or house on Airbnb and then go work remotely to some place that you've never been. It's such a win-win solution because it would offset any costs of you going

and working from somewhere else. Yeah. When I did the movie, The Holiday, did you ever see that movie? No. Oh my gosh, they house swap. So one person goes to LA and one person goes to- I did have seen and one person. And

they like trade houses. And I'm like, that is so genius because it is true. Like a lot of people these days have a lot more freedom and flexibility to work wherever. I know during the pandemic, we moved up to our lake house in Minnesota and our neighbors there have spaces that they rent on Airbnb. And during the pandemic, we would go on walks with them every day and they had this huge dream of living in Hawaii. That's where they had met initially. They wanted to live in Hawaii. They were able to rent out their spaces in Minnesota and now they live in Hawaii. Amazing.

It's like crazy because you just see that there's so much possibility there and a little bit of creativity, which I think entrepreneurs naturally have. And so it's like, maybe this is something that you haven't even considered, but like, what would it look like if you explored it? So I am curious about starting an Airbnb. And one of my fantasies is, I'm not married yet. I was in a long-term relationship begging him

to do Airbnb with me, to host an Airbnb, because to me, I feel like it's such a fun project to do with a partner. It just seems like the perfect business project to work on with somebody that you love because it's relatively easy. It's an investment that both of you guys will be a part of. There's enough things for both people to do. And to me, it just seems like such an awesome thing to do with your partner. So can you talk to us about doing this with your husband and what that is like?

Yeah. I got to shout out my husband, Drew, because he does most of our work with the Airbnbs and he loves it. He is our real estate professional in our family. He really enjoys it. So he does the majority of it. It is so fun because I love the decor, I love the messages, I love making sure our guests feel so fun because I love the decor. I love the messages. I love like making sure our guests feel cared for. I love the recommendations

like all things we've talked about in this episode. And he is very good at like the financial side and the organization and managing our cleaner and just like different things like that where he has more of the boots on the ground mentality and I'm more curious the experience, I'm gonna paint this picture. And so it is so fun and we always wanna pick places that we love and enjoy ourselves. And so it's, we love this and you will love this too,

which is a theme. Have you noticed, I love telling people about business, I love telling people about the products I love. I love just sharing experiences with people. And so it was such a natural progression and for us to do it together, it was our first big investment as a couple. We really had to have conversations of can we do this?

Well, we do this, what does this look like? And it felt like a huge leap of faith. And it's just been one that has been this like beautiful journey for the both of us. And I feel like it connects you guys closer because you guys are in business together. You're making money together. I just feel like that's such an awesome thing to do with your partner.

So I love that you do that. So something else to know about Jenna is that she only does stuff that brings her joy. You only do things that you want to do. I bring Jenna opportunities all the time. She's in my podcast network where I book sponsorships for her. She'll be like, I don't want to do that. I'm burnt out. I'm burnt out on IG Reels. I'm like, but it's thousands of dollars, are you sure? She's like be like, I don't want to do that, I'm burnt out. I'm burnt out on IG Reels.

I'm like, but it's thousands of dollars, are you sure? She's like, yeah, I don't care. I'm burnt out, I'm not doing that. Yeah. You can book it in two months or whatever. Talk to me about that. How are you able to just put your foot down? A lot of people couldn't just turn down money like that.

First off, it is such a privilege to be in a position. Yeah, it wasn't always like that. No. It wasn't always, you've got to sacrifice. But I've realized and here's what I've really realized is, if you have listened to this whole episode, you recognize the power of trust and I want my community to trust me. If something isn't in alignment,

not only do I feel it, but they feel it. I have had to get so good at discerning what are the right partners? What are the right opportunities? What are the right sponsorships to take on? Is this in alignment? And I feel that way with every opportunity, whether it is getting asked to speak on stages that I would have once dreamt of being on,

but now I'm saying no to, or whether it is hosting a mastermind or all these things. I could do a million things. I don't want to. And I think that I'm just at this place in my life where I just recognize peace needs to be protected. And right now in this stage of my life, my priority is my family.

And anything that I'm saying yes to is a no to them. And what is the most important thing to me? And so turning down things like recording another social media reel, to me it's like, but this is more time with my kids or this is protecting and preserving the integrity of my followers. She'll even turn down things that are a good fit. Totally. Totally. She'll turn down things that are a great fit for her because she's like,

no, my time with my family is more important. Yeah. I think that boundaries protect what's sacred to you. And I've just had to relearn this lesson over and over and over again. Boundaries aren't bad. And boundaries keep what I say most important to me and they exemplify that. What I am saying is most important to me is reflected in my calendar. It is reflected in my bank account, is reflected in the way I show up every single day. And so it's a muscle that you have to learn to flex. And it takes time because I think that there was a time in my life where I got paid $50

to take pictures of a cat and I couldn't believe it. Like somebody is paying me to do something. I love this is amazing. And what a blessing that is. And the better that you get out listening to your gut and discerning like, well, this is a great opportunity, but is it the right opportunity for me? It keeps you in alignment so that you are not passing up things that you should be saying yes to and that you are not saying yes to things that you should be saying no to. And so I feel like I just have a really strong intuition and a gut game. And I don't apologize for saying no any longer because my no is literally just a reflection of what is

mattering the most to me right now. Okay. Well, this has been such an awesome conversation about all the different ways that you generate revenue. We talked about courses, affiliate marketing. We talked about you hosting a property on Airbnb and also about your mindset. I love learning about that because I need to have some more boundaries. So thank you for sharing that and thank you for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

Thanks for having me. I loved having Jenna on the show and this was actually one of the first times that I met Jenna in person. The first time I met her in person was actually the day before this interview. I had flown out Jenna for a podcast network event, the IAB Upfront. Jenna's somebody that I looked up to for so long. She's just so bubbly, so nice, so

genuine. Like she's the real deal. It's so obvious why she's so successful. And Jenna is the OG female podcaster. I've been looking up to Jenna since I first started podcasting. And it's so crazy that now, four or five years later, we're peers. She's actually in my network, we're business partners. And it's just so crazy to think so much can happen in four or five years, if you just put your nose to the ground and work hard.

It's just a surreal moment for me to be basically talking to one of my podcast idols in person, being her friend, talking to her all the time online and now being able to meet in person. And by the way, we recorded this live in an Airbnb and you can watch it on YouTube. So if you want to look it up and see what it was like with us interacting on video, go to my YouTube channel, just go on YouTube, look up young and profiting, you'll find it right there. It's really easy to find. And we are going to be having an in-person interview summer.

I'm going to be doing so much in-person interviews because it's so much more engaging. It's so much more fun for me. I feel like it's better for video and just better for the conversation. I did the Gary V video in person, so I'm going to be doing a lot more in-person videos and I'm just so psyched for that. And I'm just so psyched about the conversation that we had with Jenna. She really broke down all the different ways that she makes money and she didn't hide anything. We talked about affiliate marketing, podcast sponsorships, and all that. so psyched about the conversation that we had with Jenna. She really broke down all the different ways that she makes money and she didn't hide anything.

We talked about affiliate marketing, podcast sponsorships. And one of the things that we talked about was email lists. And this is something that I wanna stress. If you haven't started your email list yet, get on it. Email lists are so powerful. I'm kicking myself for not starting my email list sooner. We've had an email list now for like two years and it's amazing. It is helping us with all of our initiatives and it's sort of like a security blanket.

You spend all this time creating content on Instagram and YouTube and all these platforms but you don't own any of it. You've got to pull those people out into your email list. So if there's nothing else that you take from this interview, it's go pull your contacts out from social media and get them on an email list. The other thing I wanted to call out that was pretty unique was Pinterest. We don't talk about Pinterest a lot, but it's still huge.

It's basically a search engine and it's so big, especially amongst women. So if you want to be highly searched and you feel like you can follow an SEO approach for your business then you should try to leverage Pinterest so you can be found there too. And finally I'm so excited that we got to talk about real estate because that's something that I really want to get into and Jenna gave a lot of pointers on that front. And I know most of you are listening and didn't watch it, but if you could just see

the joy on her face when she started talking about her experiences hosting through Airbnb, she really finds joy in doing that. She loves hosting other people and getting the feedback from them and making it nice and warm and welcoming. And I could see how that could be a really fun thing to do. That's why I want to start an Airbnb. I feel like it'd be so much fun. I feel like I'm so busy already. I don't know why I would want to add yet something else on my plate. But when it's fun and it brings you joy, you get the motivation to do it. So for me, really want to start an Airbnb so I'm just hoping that my

significant other is down. I'm thankful for Jenna schooling us on all the different ways she makes money and I'm also thankful for all of you guys who listened to this episode of Young and Profiting podcast. Now, if you have somebody out there who's interested in learning about things like affiliate marketing, podcast sponsorships, starting a real estate business with Airbnb, then share this episode, share this link, pass it around, spread us by word of mouth. That's such a nice thing to do for your yap queen

who just wants to help more people. I want more people to hear the show and I need you guys to spread it. Spread it around, spread the love. And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something, then please drop us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Nothing helps us reach more people than a good review from you all.

Take a couple minutes and do that. Man, you guys are awesome. Like I get new reviews every day and they make my day. I really read them every single day. If you guys prefer to watch your podcast's videos, you can find us on YouTube. Just look up Young and Profiting and you'll find all of our episodes on there. And if you're looking for me, you can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. Thank you so much to my incredible production team. You guys are awesome. This is your host, Hala Taha, aka The Podcast Princess, signing off. you