Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Replay: Hala on Millenial Investing with Robert Leonard

Episode Date: September 10, 2021

On today’s show, Hala Taha chats with Robert Leonard about her journey from a school dropout to a successful full-time podcaster and entrepreneur. They discuss what made her want to turn her side hustles into actual full-fledged businesses; why she chose podcasting in particular; what the most effective strategies she has found for growing a podcast; how she is able to manage her time and balance all aspects of her life, and much, much more!    What You’ll Learn:   What made Hala drop out of school, and then decide to go back and finish her studies When Hala realized that she wanted to start building side hustles and how she started a college blog business What made Hala want to turn her side hustles into actual full-fledged businesses and how she was able to manage her time and balance all aspects of her life Why Hala chose podcasting, how different it turned out to be from her expectations, and what the most effective strategies are that she has found for growing a podcast How Hala was able to land high-profile guests like Matthew McConaughey and Seth Godin and what specific strategies or tactics she used to do so All the different ways one can monetize a podcast and how a podcast can be an actual revenue-generating business Where Hala’s business idea to own an agency focused on helping people with podcasting come from   What the most impactful thing Hala has learned from interviewing guests on her podcast Why Hala chose to focus on LinkedIn, a business social network, to grow her business How to deal with and overcome failure and rejection How the Law of Attraction made an impact on Hala’s life and business And much, much more!   Sponsored by -  Siiz Flow - Head to siiz.life/yap for 50% off their Flow product   James Allen - Use code YAP30 at JamesAllen.com for 30% off   Social Media:   Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Follow Hala on Clubhouse: @halataha Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com 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 slash profiting. You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. Welcome to the show! I'm your host, Halataha, and on Young and Profit. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halla Taha, and on Young and Profiting Podcast, we investigate a new topic each week

and interview some of the brightest minds in the world. My goal is to turn their wisdom into actionable advice that you can use in your everyday life, no matter your age, profession, or industry. There's no fluff on this podcast, And that's on purpose. I'm here to uncover value from my guests by doing the proper research and asking the right questions. If you're new to the show, we've chatted with the likes of XFBI agents, real estate moguls, self-made billionaires, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Our subject matter ranges from

enhancing productivity, had to gain influence, the art of entrepreneurship, and more. If you're smart and like to continually improve yourself, hit the subscribe button because you'll love it here at Young and Profiting Podcast. Hey everyone, welcome to the Millennial Investing Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Robert Leonard, and with me today, I have Halla Taha. Welcome to the show, Halla. I'm happy host, Robert Leonard, and with me today, I have Halataha. Welcome to the show, Halah. Hi, happy to be here.

For those who aren't familiar with you yet, give us a quick overview of your background and how you got to where you are today. So my name is Halataha. I am the host of Young and Profiting Podcasts, where number one education podcast across all apps. I'm also the CEO of YAP Media, which is a social media and podcast agency. I have over 60 employees now. And I got my start in this industry because I actually worked in radio. I started off at hot 97. It's the world's number one hip hop and R&B station. I was Angie Martinez's assistant. She's

a very popular on air host. I was her assistant producer. Then I went into, have a website and entertainment blog site. Then I went into corporate and then came back to podcasting and here I am today. So we can definitely dig into that journey because it was filled with so many ups and downs. A common question I get from people is whether or not they should attend school, finish school, or some variation of that question regarding college.

I think you have an interesting perspective because you actually dropped out of college, but then you ultimately went back. So tell us what made you drop out and then tell us about your decision to go back. When I was a junior in college, I got an internship at Hot 97 and I started off in the corporate side as just a regular intern. I did such a standout job that they then were like, you know what, we want you to be in the studio area. And at the time, only 15 people were allowed. It was like, we're all the celebrities words.

So where all the action was was in the studio area. And it was a big deal for anyone to get that opportunity. So once they did that, I had to kind of work full time at the station. I was still in intern working for free. But I saw it as like, oh my gosh, this is my chance to become the next huge personality, essentially the next Angie Martinez. And so I'm going to take this opportunity and decided that I'm just going to cut the cord and go full steam ahead, give it my 100% and decided that I couldn't do school at the same time, even though I was completely working for free.

At the time, I was really bad undergrad student. I had a 2.3 GPA, all I cared about was cheerleading, sorority, being the lead of plays. I was really active and had a lot of experiences and was smart, but I didn't go to class. I would put class, I just wasn't mature enough to be ready for school. So I think the number one thing to realize is that everybody's timelines are different.

When I was 18 years old, I think I had the maturity of like a 15 year old, if I could just be honest, and I don't think I was really ready to be on my own in college and do well and use that investment in the right way. When I went back to school after I didn't get this dream job at hot 97, I worked there for free for three years. I essentially got fired because I stood up for myself for not getting paid for three years. And then I was like, you know what,

I'm gonna go back to school. At that point, I was way more mature and I got straight A's since then. Then I went on to get my MBA, I got a 4.0. And so it was just my maturity was different. And I think that I took it way more seriously and appreciated the opportunity more once I was a little bit older and realized like what money was worth and what hard work looked like and, you know, and just was ready for school, essentially.

When did you realize that you wanted to start building side hustles? And was it just from your college business blog that you had or was it not until later? Was that just kind of something you did as a passion project? You didn't really think of it as a side hustle and you didn't realize this till later? When I started my blog, I considered myself to be an entrepreneur. Like side hustles, like, wasn't really a thing back then. This was like 2010-ish. So side hustles wasn't like a buzz word yet.

I was like, I'm starting a blog site. This is the new big thing. And to me, I was an entrepreneur. I graduated college, then I started this blog. I ended up having 50 female bloggers under me. We would host parties, concerts, we had radio shows, we would monetize with the blog with our events. And I considered myself to actually just be an entrepreneur because side hustles wasn't really a thing. But in terms of like my entrepreneurial spirit, I always

had that. I was always a very hard working kid. I always was had a lemonade stand and then I would, you know, be at the parks and sell slushies when I was younger and bracelets. And I always had some sort of scheme of selling something that's skill of being a seller and being innovative and not being scared to kind of pitch an idea is something that I've been kind of born with, I think, like it's been in my spirit for a long time. Knowing where you are today, how do you differentiate between entrepreneurship or being an entrepreneur and a side hustle? I think the clear thing is do you get a paycheck from somebody else where you have to sit somewhere from nine to five, right? If that's the case, then you have a side hustle. I think my real side hustle experience was starting at media. So just to backtrack a little bit, I started this blog site. It was huge.

I was hosting parties with the DJs. I was, I had like people like soldier boy and Chris Brown on my radio shows when I was doing that blog. I always got a show on MTV. I was a lead. They filmed me all summer. We didn't end up getting that show. And I ended up shutting down that blog site.

Then I went into corporate. I got a 4.0 and I started working at Hula Packard and then Disney Streaming Services. At Disney Streaming Services, when I was there, my last year, I started something called Yap Media. I had already started my podcast. It was going pretty significantly. I was already at top 10, how to podcasts and everything like that. But I started this agency and that's what I considered to be an actual side hustle. I was working full time at Disney, and I started another business

that was generating revenue on the side. And to me, that is what a side hustle is when you're actually working full time somewhere else, and in your mornings, your nights, your weekends, you're working on another project. So 10, 20 hours a week, and that's what I would consider a side hustle. But it was still a business.

A side hustle is basically your entry way into entrepreneurship. And so by the time I left Disney streaming, about six months after launching my business, I already had two full-time US employees, I already had 30 plus contractors around the world who worked for me, and like a handful of high profile clients and probably generating already a million dollars in revenue over the year. And I was still working at Disney. And then finally I quit my job. So I basically built it up to a point where there was like zero risk. And I was going to get paid the same amount or more that Disney was paying for me by the time that I left. So I did it in a really low risk way. Why did you decide to shut down the block site?

I decided to shut down the block site? I decided to shut down the blog site because I felt like the it was very hard to monetize the blog efficiently and I also felt like the blog boom was kind of slowing down so my blog site was between like 2010 and 2013 and that was like the height of blogs and then they started just kind of dying down and then the other reason why is because I was young and I was the president of the sorority of hip hop and I had 50 female bloggers under me

and I had all these young girls and I was young myself who were like banking on me being their pathway to financial freedom and success. And it was all on my back. And to me, it was just so much pressure and I wanted to just be successful on my own. I felt like I can't help everybody be successful without being successful myself. And there was just too many mouths to feed. We would make money in an event. And then I'd have to split

it between five main girls and then also split it between the other girls. It was just too many mouths to feed. And I wasn't ready yet. You know, I didn't have an MBA. I didn't have enough business experience. At the point I had, all I had was my experience at Hot 97 in my college education, which like I said, the first three years I didn't even go to school. So I was just like learning everything on my own. And I did hone a lot of social media

and digital marketing skills that I still use today, but I wasn't quite ready yet to be the impactful leader in entrepreneur that I think I am today. When you were working at Disney full-time, you had a pretty big side hustle as you mentioned. How did you manage your time? How did you balance those two things while maintaining the other aspects of your life like health, fitness, those types of things? How did you balance it all? Just for full context, I was still working out all the time. I had a boyfriend and was still making dinner every night, like you know, so I still had a life on top of everything else.

And really, it was just lots of sacrifices. I don't watch TV. I still don't watch TV. I never turned the TV on unless I'm like watching a movie in its date night. All my time is like used pretty productively and lots of multitasking. So for example, I am one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn and I literally grew my LinkedIn following on my commute to work. So I used to live in Brooklyn, Disney was in Manhattan. I would be taking a 45 minute train ride and every day I would write my LinkedIn post of the day. And on the way home, I would do all my common engagement. So even my train commute was used strategically. If I had an interview, I used to have to take interviews at lunch while I was working at

Disney. I literally didn't even, I was still doing my podcast and had huge guests on my podcast at that time. And was still working at Disney. And so I would like run to a phone booth. We didn't even have office space that I could like really secure. And I would basically like have a phone booth that I would like run to a phone booth. We didn't even have office space that I could like really secure. And I would basically like have a phone booth that I would like call for the day and like squat in essentially all day so that I'd have a quiet space for my interview.

And then I'd have like two minutes to set up my equipment, do this interview, and I would be studying on the train listening to other interviews or just like preparing my notes for my interviews. I would wake up early, you know, I'd have to be on a train by seven. I'd be up at six, at least an hour in the morning working on my stuff. And then at night, I would be working from seven a midnight almost every night. Maybe I'd have two hours to work out and cook dinner and then I'd be working again.

So I don't think it was the healthiest thing, but what I want people to realize is that everyone can find 10 to 20 hours in their week to work on their side hustle. And if you decide that you want to do 20 hours a week, you're going to get to your goal a lot faster, but you can take it as slow or fast as you want it. So for me, I built something massive very quickly. And that's because I was like, you know what, I'm going to go all in. I'm going to not watch TV. I'm going to sacrifice and not do all the fun things that I could possibly be doing right now so that I can just work on this and build this and live out my dream.

Every weekend I would work at least four hours on Saturday and Sunday at minimum, if not all day, like a full working day, Saturday and Sunday. And that really helped me get ahead. And even when I just had my podcast, I was working that hard because the podcast itself was a side hustle at first two. And so I was really used to this. Like for three whole years, I had like a side hustle and a significant podcast that I was managing. And then again, the other key is building a team. I did not do it on my own. By episode two, I had my first volunteer who's now my business partner Timothy Tan. By episode two, I had my first volunteer, who's now my business partner Timothy Tan. By episode eight, I had 10 volunteers in a Slack channel.

What I would do is just basically, I had graphic design skills, I had video editing skills, I had social media skills, I had podcast production skills. I had all the knowledge to run this and would just train people who wanted to learn from me. They were usually fans, really big super fans in my podcast who would reach out, I just want to help in any way. And so one guy did my website and one guy did my videos and one guy did my social.

And I would essentially create the template and then they would help me scale and repeat. So this whole time while I was, I think the only reason why I was able to build this as a side hustle while working an executive job is because I had the skills to motivate and recruit a volunteer team. I didn't pay them until, you know, we started the agency. How did you think about that piece of not paying them? Because you mentioned in your story that you work for three years without pay. So do you think that that influenced

how your relationship was with them? Yeah, 100%. I have so much experience for creating volunteers because, first of all, I was an intern at hot 97 and I was like the queen intern who would train all the interns. So that's what I was at hot 97. Then I started my blog site and I had 50 female bloggers under me. Most of them volunteers slash interns, you know, quote unquote, we get college credit to do this blog and write blogs for me. And then, you know, I was president of my alumni association at NGIT, then I had more volunteers. I was president of the Young Employee Network at HP. I had more volunteers. So I had so much experience by the time I started my podcast and my agency on how to recruit and motivate volunteers. And most of the time, it's just being mutually beneficial. So the fact that I had all this knowledge

and knew how to teach people and could give them the experiences that they wanted and the community and sense of purpose that they wanted. And I was able to kind of connect those dots and keep everybody motivated. And it's funny, I feel like people, I think my team has such great company culture, we're so happy.

But honestly, when we were volunteers, it was the most happy, fun, stress-free experience because when there's no clients or real hard deadlines, it's a lot more fun to just work on something. So, I've just got a knack for recruiting and training volunteers. And I think that's really, really helped me get ahead and maximize everything that I'm doing. You mentioned that you recently made the leap into full-time entrepreneurship from leaving your job at Disney.

I actually made the same leap also this year. How did you know you were ready to leave the corporate world? Was it really just that revenue and income figure or was it something else? It was some multiple things because when I was in corporate and I had my podcast, I literally thought that my podcast would always be a hobby. And I thought that I would always make money being in corporate. And I really thought that my trajectory was to like be the CEO or CMO of some Fortune 50 company. And I really thought that that was my future. And I almost never even thought about having another business. But everything happened so organically and I couldn't deny it.

It was like the perfect storm and almost felt like kind of everything fell in my lap. So what happened was is I had this big podcast, right, called Young and Profiting, like I mentioned earlier. We were top 10 how-to podcasts. We were getting a lot of sponsors. I was one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn and people would come on my show,

best-selling authors, celebrity CEOs, and they'd always ask me the same question. They'd say, who does your marketing? And I'd be like, yeah, I do my marketing. This is what I do for my career. I mean, I work at Disney. I've got a great team of volunteers. Like, we're just doing this for fun.

This is all just, I had a good intentions. I was just there. I thought that I was just there to serve and not monetize anything podcast wise. Like that wasn't even part of the plan. But people kept asking me and insistent on it. Until one day had their monohan, who was a huge influencer on LinkedIn, a big speaker,

she was like, listen, Hala, like we need to get on a call. And she's like, just show me everything that you do. Like, your marketing is amazing. Your videos are amazing. What you're doing on like, Dan is incredible. And so I walked her through all my processes. And she was like, Hala, your stuff is as good as Gary Vee's team. Like, I just had a call with Gary Vee.

Like, what you're doing is literally what VaynerMedia is doing. Like, do you understand? And I was like, yeah, that's cool. But like, I don't, not offering services. Like, I have a job. That's like literally what I told her. And she's like, holla, like you, like you literally have a million dollar idea right here. I want to be your first client. Like you can't say no. And I was like, okay, fine. I'll just start with your videos. So it was like our first client. She probably paid me like 500 bucks a month,

like nothing, right? Before I knew it, I just took over all her LinkedIn, all her podcasts, everything, and then I was landing these huge clients, like 30 pay monthly retainers of people who just wanted the same thing that Heather had. And then I was like, oh my gosh, this is like way bigger than I thought it was gonna be. And one thing just led to another and I ended up having, like I said, 35 people who worked

for me by the time I ended up putting my job. It just became so clear that there was so much demand, there was so little risk. I had all the skills that I needed to do this and that I would be a fool not to go after this opportunity. It just, all the puzzles just fell together and I think that's really key. I guess the lesson in this is sometimes you're blind to your biggest opportunities. And for so long, my answer to people was like, I don't do that. It's just for me, I'm not offering that. But if people are always asking you the same things, like, hey, attention to what people are saying you're good at, and what people

are saying they want. And so, you know, people weren't saying, I want the guests that have been on your podcast. They were specifically asking for the marketing piece of it. And so I was like, okay, let me tackle that and become the premier white glove, podcast marketing agency out there, and we did it. So I think it's just paying attention to what people say are good at as like your first step into a successful side hustle. Why did you originally choose podcasting as your medium?

Was it just a natural transition from radio to podcasting? It's kind of a long story. It's like a revenge story of like why I decided to actually go back into starting a podcast. But yeah, I've always loved broadcasting. I had the radio experience. I was a system producer. I used to do commercials for Hot 97. The whole time I was at Hot 97, I had side online radio shows. That's kind of like the precursor of podcast. You would actually go to a studio and they'd film you. And then the video would go up on YouTube and you would tell people to go to a website like dtfradio.com or a list radio.com and listen to you live. So I was doing all these things that were like precursors to podcasts.

And then I went into corporate and I literally thought that I would never get back on a mic. I thought my entertainment career is over. Like I told you, I literally thought I was going to just be an executive incorporate for the rest of my life. One thing happened where I basically didn't get an opportunity that I wanted at each year. I was the president of the Young Employee Network and launched this thing called the Young Employee Network, which was like a huge culture movement within the company. And then I was essentially supposed to be the president of the Global Young Employee Network.

The specifics don't matter. All that matters that you guys need to know is that I didn't get the opportunity and I really deserved it. And it was another one of those times in my life where I had basically allowed the gatekeeper to tell me what my destiny was gonna be. And at that moment in my life, when that gatekeeper told me no, the same way that, you know, hot 97 didn't give me that dream job. And that was a gatekeeper

telling me no, the same way that MTV squashed my reality TV show last minute, and pulled the plug. And it was a gatekeeper who told me no, I was sick of the gatekeepers telling me no. And then I saw podcasting. This was 2018 as an opportunity to own something that was mine that I could control and that nobody could tell me no. And that I had the control of how big or little I wanted this to be and how long or short I wanted to go on this endeavor. So that's why I started the podcast because I wanted an opportunity to be the voice of millions of people and help people improve their lives professionally and financially.

I had, you know, reached my first six figures, all this kind of stuff where I felt like I was a failed entrepreneur, so I had that experience. I also had the experience of being incorporate it, and I just felt like I could really talk to young professionals in many different ways and wanted to be that voice. And then again, I wanted a brand that I actually owned and controlled and not something that MTV or hot 97 or anybody could take away from me. And that's why I started the podcast so that I could own my own voice and trajectory. How has podcasting been different than you expected it to be when you first got started?

Oh my gosh, I think everybody thinks it's gonna be easier than it is. I remember I was working at each P when I started the podcast and I went into, we had like a little meeting and it was, everybody was giving their New Year's resolution and it was like the week before Christmas or something. And I told them like, oh, when we come back into the office January 15th or whatever it was, I'm gonna have my podcast and I had just thought of the idea that day. I thought I was gonna launch, create a podcast in like three weeks or less. I didn't end up launching it till that April. It took me like four months to actually launch it. So it's just, you know, it's just the whole process. Like you don't realize how much goes into it. And then like the whole marketing piece, like it's not like if you put up a podcast,

you're gonna get thousands of downloads right away. You know, there's actually a certain way to market it. You've got to learn about media buying and how to convert social media users to actual podcast listeners, even just like the type of content that you create, the equipment that you use, the hosting that you use. There's so many things that go into it. It is really a craft. And I think that there's lots of people on different ends of the spectrum. There's people who get into podcasting and they really like just the basics. And they usually don't do that well. And then there's people who are like me and you

who are more like advanced and kind of know the ins and outs of every single little thing that you need to know. And that's how you succeed in any industry that you're in is actually being an expert and knowing the ins and outs of the industry. There's lots of people in podcasting who really know nothing about podcasting, but they

have a podcast. It's funny because I, when I first started, I thought it was going to be a lot easier than it actually was. I'm actually hiring a host to help me co-host millennial investing. In the job description, I wrote that podcasting is a lot harder than you expect. Whatever your expectations are, at least double. If not triple the amount of work that you think it's going to take. And I just said, trust me, I'm speaking from experience because it's exactly what happened to me. I came into podcasting and I knew I wanted to have a very professional high quality podcast,

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no idea how they do it because like I said, I was recruiting volunteers since like episode two. I had people to help me scale and I think that's key. It's like understanding what you're good at, what you're bad at and trying to outsource the things that are just going to eat up your time so that you can focus on those things that really matter and that you can't do, you can't actually outsource. Like for example, maybe preparing for the podcast or coming up with the guests that might be something you want to always control, but there's so many things that you can outsource

with the podcast if you're smart about it. Did you have high turnover using volunteers? No, I didn't, you know what? I don't know what it was. I just, I have a lot of the volunteers that work for me are now team leads that are getting paid six figures to help me run my business. So they've all been rewarded and have based most of them have stuck with me. Like, of course,

we had people that left, but all the core people have stayed. And I think it's just the vision. It's just so strong and it's an emergent space that's really exciting. And we've been on the forefront in terms of being innovative. And I think they just see the opportunity and some of them are incentivized with equity and things like that. But yeah, I think I didn't have too much turnover, and I think part of that is just knowing how to motivate people and teaching them, because here's the thing, here's my rule, at least now. It's like, we have an interim program where we still have volunteers.

Every semester, we get about 10 interns who now they get a small stipend because we're making money in the past. They didn't even get a stipend. But it's like, you know, 200, 300 bucks a month, it's nothing. And my rule is, as long as you're learning, I don't feel bad if we're not really paying you. If you're learning and getting the experience and like we're teaching you, actively teaching you new things, then I don't feel bad to paying. As soon as I feel like that switches where we're getting more value than we're giving you, then you need to get paid. And as long as that balance is kept, you can keep volunteers for very long, for very happy. The key is, is that you can't teach somebody how to do videos and then expect

them to do the same thing for a year. You can teach somebody to do videos, they do that for three months and be like, okay, now I'm gonna teach you how to audio edit and you can do that now. It's moving people around so that they keep learning and learning and learning while contributing, but once you keep somebody in the same place and expect them to do the same thing, that's when you take advantage.

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That's s-i-i-z.life slash app. I'll stick the link in our show notes. I've actually been quite surprised to hear how many people who listen to this show are interested in starting up podcasts as their own side hustle, or hear how many people who listen to this show are interested in starting up podcasts as their own side hustle or just how many people ask me what strategies to use to grow a podcast. So what are the most effective strategies that you've used to grow a podcast audience? That's a great question.

I feel like I was really creative and innovative in the way that I've done it and continue to do it. And so I'm definitely a type of person where I just give away all my secrets. I do that on call-bows, I do that everywhere, so I'll just be totally open. So I think one of the biggest keys for somebody who wants to go a podcast audience is to have one platform that you have leverage. Okay, so for me that platform was LinkedIn. I had, but almost all my eggs in that basket I didn't worry about being on Instagram Twitter Facebook like I didn't do that

I just focused on LinkedIn and I dominated I have more engagement on LinkedIn than Lewis Howes and Jay Shetty and all these huge podcasters because I focused on that I learned I fed all the features I learned how to hack it I understood what kind of captions worked I knew what content types worked and I really just focused on that, I learned, I fed all the features, I learned how to hack it. I understood what kind of captions worked. I knew what content types worked. And I really just focused on that. So I ended up growing, like, let's say, let me take this back before I was, you know, a number one education podcast when I was still starting, I was getting like 3000 downloads a month, which to some people now is actually really good numbers.

But like, to me, that's like when I was smaller, right? When I was first starting, I was getting 3,000 downloads a month, which you're probably looking at me like, that's so little because you had instant success, which we can get into as well that I know. But I didn't have instant success. You know, I didn't have great SEO. Young and profiting is not something that people search for. I had to spoon feed my podcast to everyone.

So back to the story, I grew LinkedIn and I used it as my leverage. So once LinkedIn was about 60,000 followers and I had crazy engagement and reach and I reached out to all the different podcast players. And I noticed that not everybody is listening on Apple. Okay, like 30% of people listen on Apple, 20% on Spotify and then all the other apps make up the rest of the market. And I said, what about all those apps? I'm pretty sure they want to talk to my LinkedIn following because a lot of my LinkedIn following love podcasts, that's why they follow me, right? They love being educated, it's their perfect market.

So I just started cold emailing. I, you know, podcast republic, my name's Hala. I have a huge LinkedIn following. I'll do some contests in exchange for you promoting me in your app. And I just did that game and everybody sponsored me cascbox, pod being pod see, good pods, pod corn. You name it like any podcast platform,

whether you were an app or a website or a blog, I reached out and I was like, let's cross promote. And all that happened because I had leverage. One thing, LinkedIn. If I had concentrated on Twitter and Instagram and all these other platforms, I wouldn't have had anything because it wouldn't have been a strong sell. So getting that one platform that's your leverage is key. Then as you grow your podcast audience, you can leverage

that. So then I would start saying, Hey, Casbaks, you want to reach my 20,000 followers on podcast Republic. I'll do a commercial for you if you feature me in your app. This whole industry called MediaBying and podcasting that people don't know about because a lot of the podcast networks and bigger agencies, they're the ones doing the MediaBying. It's not really the independent podcaster that knows a lot about this, but there's banner ad space within all these apps and every app has a different offering. Some will incorporate you in their onboarding when

people sign up for the app, and they'll just make you automatically check as a podcast to get subscribed to, some offer that, some offer push notifications to everybody who is just on their app and they'll send a push to listen to your episodes, some are just banner ads, some are audio ads, they're all different, it's like the Wild Wild West,

all the subscriber acquisition costs are different, everything is different, you have to experiment on these different platforms. Now, I didn't have a lot of budgets, so like I said, I just trade it. And because this is such a new industry, there's still a lot of people willing to collab and trade and do these kind of like archaic type buying in this space. And I've got 20 clients who do media buying through me. And I have deals with the podcast players where basically I'm like, Hey, give me 20% credit every time I sell something for you. So now I sell ads for these multi millionaire and billionaire clients that I have. And then I just get free ads because I have them credit me like for what I sell instead of taking a referral fee They just give me the ads. So I do lots of creative things like that to make me

Basically give me the buying power as somebody who has a lot more budget because I just do creative things And I think that's the lesson here I don't think anybody can replicate what I've done I think that's kind of hard to replicate But I think that the lesson here is that you can be creative and leverage what you have. That's kind of how I grew my show. It was like a lot of getting sponsored and kind of cross promotion and leveraging my audience and leveraging other people's audiences. That's the main way. And we can get into social media

strategies as well if you'd like. I mentioned that was one of the most common questions I get from people about podcasting. I'd say the second most common question I get is, how do you land high profile guests? For me, it's Lewis Housen, Kevin O'Leary, and people like that, you've had guests like Matthew McConaughey and Seth Godin. What are the specific strategies and tactics that you use to land high profile guests?

I think the key is realizing that you just have to ask. You'd be surprised to how many people will just say yes, if you put something compelling that's thoughtful and not like cookie cutter out there and just ask. For me, I think LinkedIn was huge because it gave me that social proof. So even before my podcast was big, having that platform as social proof was really key because if I messaged them off of there, they'd see my engagement and even though my podcast

wasn't so big, they were more inclined to trust that there is potential for people to see this content. I think the other thing is to see who's already on podcast. So it's a way harder sell for somebody who's like, you know, Matthew McConaughey, I got him. He was doing rounds on the bigger podcast, right? If I went after Ben Affleck would be a lot harder, even though they're like maybe same star power, let's say,

but Ben Affleck might be a lot harder because he's not promoting anything. He's not comfortable on podcasts. He's never done it before, maybe. So one of the things that I'll do is look at my competitors and I'll have like, you know, 10 podcasts that I look at who they're interviewing and we'll scrape them. We'll see who's Jordan Harbinger interviewing this month.

I'll scrape them and I'll be like, okay, these are people who are actively going on podcasts. They might be more inclined to say yes than people who are not actively already on podcasts. So that's one way. Lots of authors want to be on podcasts like now when books launch, one of the main strategies is for the author to get on like 40 podcasts week of launch, right? So you can basically look to see what the most highly anticipated books are So that's how I got Seth Godin. I saw that Seth Godin has the practice of creativity coming out And so I proactively reached out to him and I said, hey, I see that you have this book coming out in November I reached out to him about three months, Hey, I see that you have this book coming out in November. I reached out to him about three months before.

And he said, perfect timing, Hala. I would love to be on your podcast. And then he put me on the train of the other 15 major podcasts that he was going to be on. And it was a huge look that I was one of the first podcasts to come out with his content. So I think those are some great strategies to kind of target guests that are more likely to say yes. What impact has that any big guest really had on your podcast?

For example, with Matthew McConaughey, that is, I guess, such a big name that people just can't shake it out of their heads where now I'm introduced as like, hey, this is Hala, who's a young and profiting podcast, you know, cover of podcast magazine, January 2021, and interviewed Matthew McConaughey. Like, you know, it's like such a big part of what I'm doing now because it's just has so much star power. So, I mean, in terms of like bragging rights, it's huge, but at the same time, like, just because our big guest doesn't mean that it's a better show or episode. Some of my most popular episodes have just been really great content from like a sleep

scientist that nobody knows about or a human behavior expert that is just so good and so well spoken but not the biggest name in the world, right? So I think it's it's understanding that it's a balance like you do want the big names, the star power that always help. In the case of Matthew McConaughey, he actually like reposted my content, which was huge and really helped. But a lot of these bigger guests actually don't repost content and don't support the cross-promotion. And then it's kind of like, well, you spend all this time and money trying to get this big guest, and then they don't even help support it. So you need to make things as easy as possible for people to support. So one of the tips that I give people is when you're creating content to promote your podcast, do it in story size, do it in that like vertical story size, because a big

celebrity is more likely to do that with like a swipe up to your link, rather than like an infeed post that's going to stay there forever, that's not in their brand. And you really want to make sure that you have really professional looking assets because that's going to also make sure that they support. So if you do get a celebrity, you've got to go above and beyond to make sure that you give them content in a way that's really easy for them to support. And then the other thing I do is like DM people a day of launch and ask them like, hey, can you share this? Here's a link. Reach out to them on email if you have their text,

like whatever it is, you want to reach out on multiple angles and know who their social media person is. Because most of the celebrities aren't even managing their own social media, so that's not even the person you want to talk to. So to get all that information up front so that you can make it worth it when you actually have a celebrity on the show. What are the different ways that you monetize a podcast?

How can a podcast be an actual revenue generating business? That's such a great question. And if you had asked me this last year, I would have given you a completely different answer. But now I really know the ins and outs of everything after having an agency and one of my mentors is Jordan Harbinger. He's like the biggest OG in the game and has taught me so much. So there's lots of ways. The first way, I'll tell you, let's do evolution from starting a podcast to having a bunch of downloads. So when you're first starting podcasts, you don't have downloads, you don't have an audience. All you have is your show and whoever's listening

and your guests. So one way to monetize your podcasts is actually through your guests, lead generation through your guests. For example, my marketing agency caters to celebrities, CEOs, and bestselling authors. Those are the same people who come on my podcast. And when I first started my marketing agency, all my clients were former podcast guests that ended up being curious about our marketing and how good it was and then ended up

becoming clients. So that's how I initially started monetizing my podcast was through my guests, the people who would come on my show were the perfect marketing clients for me. So anybody out there who's thinking of a podcast, if you have a business, if you can think of a way to interview your ideal clients that is a great way to network and talk to people who otherwise might not want to talk to you. It is a lot of people that I know monetize their podcast in this way. I've got a friend Adam Posner. He does like HR recruitment and he interviews HR recruitment influencers in the space and he gets so much business doing that because it's

like the perfect thing for him. So that's one way. Another way is affiliate marketing. So when you're first starting out with your podcast, you can become an affiliate marketer for things like Audible or Fiverr or, you know, click funnels, whatever it is that's relevant to your, to your content or relevant to your audience. You can become an affiliate partner. You don't need a certain amount of downloads. And the one thing I'll say is that you're not going to make a lot of money doing that. It takes a lot for a podcast listener to convert and like follow a link and all of that. But if you want to make a couple extra bucks a week, a hundred bucks a week or less, you could try affiliate marketing.

Again, I think that's a really tough thing to try to scale. As a podcast, I don't want to put people down the wrong path, but technically it's something you can do. You can also do commercials for your own products and services. So before you actually have enough downloads for a sponsor, you can just have commercial space, a mid-roll, a pre-roll, a post-roll, 90 seconds or so, that you can promote your own products and services and try to sell. And then lastly, it's CPM advertising model. So once you get to, let's say, 5,000 to 10,000 downloads in episode, some agencies have 15,000 is the minimum.

It just depends what the platform is. You can start selling ads on a CPM basis. So basically what that means is like for every 1000 downloads, you can charge anywhere from 15 to $45 per 1000 downloads. And you can start to layer on commercials on your podcast. So you don't just need one commercial. You can have on commercials on your podcast. So you don't just need one commercial, you can have four commercials in your podcast. So let's say you're getting 20,000 downloads in episode,

you probably get like 800 bucks a commercial, the ad agency might take 15 or 20% and then maybe you're left with $700 and let's say you do four commercials, that's $2,800 in episode, you do two episodes a week. You're making almost six grand a week on your podcast. If you just have a small team, that's great. And so that's one way you can monetize as well

as through like CPM. And the way that you would do that is you could sign up to platforms like Advertise Cast. They're great. I can highly recommend them. And then there's other podcast agencies like Ad Results and Red Circle and all these other different agencies is probably like 40 of them that sell ads for podcasters. But the

key in the beginning is to focus on growing your show. Focus on growing your show. That is your number one goal because none of this is possible, especially that last business model CPM. If you don't have the downloads, you're never going to get there. And so focus on growing your show, having great content, a great social media strategy, maybe do some lead gen with your guests. If you've got a relevant side hustle or business, that's like, I think beautiful when that all works out. Because now I'm monetizing in so many different ways. I'm monetizing with my guests, I'm monetizing with my ads, I'm monetizing through just my own like, you know, I'm gonna launch a course eventually.

So I think that's the smartest way to go about it. Yap fam, if you're ready to take your business to New Heights, break through to the six or seven figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach show has got you covered. Kelly Roach is a best-selling author, a top-ranked podcast host, and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of Not One, but six thriving companies, and now she's ready to share her knowledge and experience with you on the Kelly Roach Show.

Kelly is an inspirational entrepreneur, and I highly respect her. She's been a guest on YAP. She was a former social client. She's a podcast client. And I remember when she came on Young and Profiting and she talked about her conviction marketing framework, it was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing. And as a marketer, I really, really respect

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Tune into the Kelly Road Show as she unveils her secrets for growing your business. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career or if you're already a seasoned entrepreneur. In each episode, Kelly shares the truth about what it takes to create rapid, exponential growth. Unlock your potential, unleash your success, and start living your dream life today. Tune into the Kelly Road Show available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, you have, fam. As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast, it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture.

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and I'm so happy because I really needed this class. With masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace. And we all know that profiting in life doesn't just mean thriving in business. With masterclass, you can brush up on your art skills or your cooking skills or even your modeling skills. With over 180 classes from a range of world class instructors,

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say the most surprising thing about Masterclass since I started this incredible journey on the platform is the value for the quality of classes instructors, the platform itself is beautiful. The videos are super high quality. You can't beat it. smart TV and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class and right now as the app listener, you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com-profiting. That's masterclass.com-profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com-sash-profiting. I get asked about how to find mentors all the time. And you just mentioned that Jordan Harbinger's one of your mentors, how did you come to be affiliated

with Jordan, how did you gain that mentorship? Podcasting is a great way to get a mentor. So Jordan was a guest on my podcast. And he came on my podcast and I think he thought he was never gonna see me again, but I made sure that that wasn't the case. So what I would do is, like I said, I used to do all these cross promo things

and people would like, for example, write a blog about me. And in exchange, I would do like a social post promoting that blog. So I started like featuring Jordan in my blog. So like, who's your podcast inspiration? And I would like, mention Jordan and then I'd message him on Instagram like, hey, I mentioned you in this blog, you know, I got on the cover of podcast magazine and it had like a side bar of who's your favorite podcasters and like I put Jordan and I was

like, hey, I featured you in podcast magazine, you know, and then I would just ask him really really smart in-depth questions on Instagram and things like that. And then Jordan started to get to know me a little bit better and he basically approached me and was like, hey, my producer is sick. And I need somebody to write a new ad copy. Can you help me? And I was like, sure. So I started writing ad copy for free for him. I didn't ask for any money. I just did a favor. And then he was like, wow, you're really good at this. And then I started asking questions about media buying. Because I knew who was in the media buying space. And then one thing led to another. Now he's in my Slack channel.

He's like an official advisor. I talked to him every day. We're doing deals together. He's basically my business partner. And it's all because I was willing to give him some free value. And he realized that like, she's new, but she's doing stuff really different. And I'm old.

But like maybe like we can learn from each other. So he's teaching me all traditional podcasting stuff, and I'm like, well, have you thought about it this way? Because I have no formal training. And I just figured it all out on my own, and I've got my own things that I learned along the way. So just I think realizing that the mentor mentee relationship is give and take,

you don't want to just keep taking and taking and taking from a mentor. Actually, you want to give, mentee relationship is give and take, you don't wanna just keep taking and taking and taking from a mentor. Actually, you wanna give, give, give, give, until they're like, oh my gosh, I need to give something back because this person has just given me so much. What has been the most impactful thing you've learned from guests on your podcast?

I think one of the most aha things that I learned was from Scott Adams. And so he's the creator of Dilbert. It's like one of the most syndicated cartoons in America. And he taught me the concept of skill stacking. And this is something I talk about all the time because I just feel like it's so relevant for what I've done with my life and where I ended up.

And basically he is a decent drawer. He had business experience. He's funny, and he's a good writer. And so he's not the best at any of those things, but he's okay at them. He put them all together and then became the world's number one cartoonist and is now like a millionaire

and out of the stratosphere in terms of success. Everybody knows what Dilbert is, right? But he wasn't the best at any of those. He stacked up his skills and put together a unique offering. So I feel like I'm the same. I don't think I'm the best podcaster in the world, but I'm really good at marketing. I'm super creative.

I know how to build teams and lead teams and scale teams. And I'm a good host. I'm a good researcher. I put all those things together. And now I'm one of the biggest female podcasters in the game. And it's because I had stacked all those experiences. And so just understanding that every experience that you have is actually preparing you for the future you.

And knowing how to like pull those bits together and tie them together to put out an offering is just really, really impactful. So that's skill stacking. And that's one of the biggest takeaways that I've had so far. As we get towards the end of the show, I like to ask the guest three questions that create what I call an action plan for listeners to do when they're done with this episode.

So the first question gives listeners something to actually implement in their life. The second question gives them a resource to go learn from. And the third one gives a specific action item to take right now. So the first question is, which habit or principle do you follow in your life that has had a big impact on your success that not enough people do but should? How you do anything is how you do everything. That is something that like if I had a tattoo or like had to tattoo myself with a phrase is what I would do. Like how you do anything is how you do everything. Give your 100% effort and

every little thing that you do. What has been the most influential book in your life? And it doesn't necessarily have to be your favorite because I know that maybe it's not your favorite but it's been the most influential or most impactful. So what is that book? That is the like switch by Dr. Jack Schaefer, who is actually on my podcast three times already, and incredible book that helps you understand how to become more likable and have better first impressions. And to me, the strategies that I learned in that book

has helped me in almost every situation that I've been in, every high-stake situation, and every good thing that has happened to me is because of the things that I learned in that book to become more approachable and more likeable. When this episode's over, before the listener quickly jumps to the next podcast or to your podcast, what is one action they should take that can really help improve their career, life, or business. What I want you to look at is if you're trying to achieve something and the reason why you're not achieving it is because there's some sort of a gatekeeper telling you know is to step back and realize that you have more control of your

future than you realize and that you can create your own thing and you don't necessarily need to wait for someone to open a door for you. I think I would have been a lot more successful in my life had I opened that door for myself earlier, rather than always wanting some big brand to open that door for me. So realizing that if a gatekeeper keeps telling you no, don't try to find the next gatekeeper,

try to do it on your own potentially. And I don't mean to say that everybody should be an entrepreneur. Everybody should have a side hustle. But if there's something that you really, really want and you're passionate about, don't let anybody tell you you can't do it. That's my advice. Become the gatekeeper. Exactly. Before we hand off to where people can find you, the last segment of the show, I like to wrap up by turning the tables and letting the guest ask me a question So what question do you have for me? Oh So Robert I know that you have a very popular podcast and I know he wanted the questions that you asked me earlier

That you said is a question that you often get is how do you grow your show and And I know that from talking to you in the past, that you don't really have a huge social media following. You didn't have me and you took totally different approaches. I had huge LinkedIn following and leverage that. You didn't. So talk to us about why you think your show has grown so fast and what strategies you took.

You're right about social media. I had no social media. I didn't even exist on social media. When I started the podcast. I had one small Facebook page for like friends and family, but that was it. I didn't have Twitter or Instagram or I don't think I even had LinkedIn at the time.

But what I did was I partnered with a podcast company, a company that already had a podcast that existed and I leveraged their brand. And so people listening are very familiar with the show we study billionaires. And so that gave me a little bit of initial traction. But I don't want people to get lost in saying, Oh, it's only successful because of the brand because we've launched two other shows that no longer exist. If you're listening

to the show for a while, you might have heard of Silicon Valley and the good life. Those are two other shows that we launched and they've been shut down because they didn't grow. And so the brand helps, but it's not everything. And so what I really found that helped was finding these great guests that are like in the middle in terms of size. So you talked about having big guests and you explained it almost exactly how I would. It is my biggest guests were often my lowest downloaded episodes and that is because they don't share it and they don't share it across their social that is because they don't share it,

and they don't share it across their social media platforms, they don't share it on their website, et cetera. But if you find somebody that has between 10 and 100,000 or 200,000 followers that they're actually engaged and they're willing to share it, getting that share on their social media site or on their website or even just in a story if they can, that has always led to a lot more downloads for me.

So you focus on that size of guests and it just continues to lead to growth and growth and growth from there. Because you get everybody that came from the last person that did that is now listening and then that next guest that does that, you have all those people still listening, so it kind of compounds from there. And that has been the biggest, biggest thing for me. And then also, I mentioned this last time we chatted, but titles. I think a lot of people focus on SEO and SEO is

really important, but it's not as important in podcasting. I find that being an eye catching title is really important for podcast episodes. So those two things you combine those that has been the biggest impact on on the growth. Super interesting. And I think the name of your podcast is really good too, because I think people actually started just called investors podcast, right, or millennial investor. Like that is so good. Like anybody, so many people searching for stuff

like that all the time. So I think also just like your searchable name is really, I think, helpful as well. You did mention that last time we chatted in for those listening who are familiar with Stig, Stig recommended the name, Millennial Investing, and at first I was kind of hesitant. I didn't really like the name. I didn't think it was a good name, but then clearly it has been good and you even mentioned that it's a really good name.

So I guess I can admit that I was wrong on that and it's been helpful. Where can the audience go to connect with you? Where can they find your podcasts? Maybe your agency? Where can they follow you on social media? Where they can find you? You guys can find me on LinkedIn. You can search for my name.

It's Halataha. I'm also on Clubhouse. So if you guys are podcasters out there, I do podcast office hours and always kind of doing educational events on Clubhouse for podcasters so you can follow me there. Ha la Taha. I'm on Instagram at Yap with Ha la. Young and profiting podcast is everywhere.

Apple Spotify, Cast Box, you name it so you could just Google Young and Profiting and find a million links. And then Young and Profiting.com, if you can't remember any of that. I'll be sure to put a link to the website, all your other resources in the show notes below for anybody that's interested in checking them out. Hala, thanks so much for joining me. Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

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