Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Replay: Hala on the Business Made Simple Podcast - How To Develop An Internship Program

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Some of the biggest challenges you face growing your business is finding the right talent and managing to pay your people without overhead getting too high. That's why you need an internship program. And we don't mean some stereotypical program where college students complete mindless tasks.  In today's conversation with expert Hala Taha, host of the Young and Profiting podcast and founder of YAP media, you'll learn how to build an internship program that makes it easy to find and train the talent you need to grow your business.   Sponsored by -    Kraken - visit kraken.com/yap to learn more or search for "Kraken" in the app store.   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 Check out Business Made Simple Podcast on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/business-made-simple-with-donald-miller/id1092751338?itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com-profiting. You can crush your fingers and all your toes during a data center migration. You can knock on wood, pluck a dozen for leaf clovers or look to your lucky stars for a successful office expansion.

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Welcome to the show. I'm your host, Halataha, 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

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All the time. Thanks for coming on today. Hi, Don Alden. So happy to be here. I'm grateful to that you're here too. I love to be in on your podcast, Young and Profiting. And I knew the second we had a conversation that we needed a sequel. We needed to keep going. You have an amazing story and it's going to help coach a lot of people who are listening. You started a side hustle when you were on staff at Disney streaming and by the time you left your main job, you had 35 employees at your side hustle. That is not common. Yeah, and I mean, and I feel like if anybody, if I can do it, anybody could do it. So I'd love to talk about that further. Do you really think

that's true? Because a lot of people say that that and then you get into and you realize they're extremely charismatic, they have a talent stack that's enormously high. You really think anybody can start a side hustle or do you have some, you know, just be honest. You have some characteristics that are clearly you. One thing that I'm really good at is recruiting volunteers and motivating a team to work for free, which is how I built my business. It literally started as a team of interns and every team I've ever started, I've had multiple situations where I've done something like this.

It all started with a volunteer group and funny enough with young and profiting, my goal was to do it on my own. But by episode eight, I had 10 volunteers in a Slack channel. So that is that's a unique skill set, the ability to recruit people to work for you for free. Yes. So, so let's say that somebody listening would love to have a little bit of a labor pull to get something going and obviously keep overhead low. What's the key to getting people to do work for free? Let's just tackle that first.

Yeah, so I think I've always been really good at starting internship programs. So first of all, being able to market what you're looking for and come up with some sort of a promotion plan online to recruit interns where they apply, you kind of screen them, you say what you want, but the key once they're in the door is to believe in them, is to mentor them, is to train them, you say what you want. But the key once or in the door is to believe in them, is to mentor them, is to train them, and to actually have skills yourself where you can train them so that they respect you and feel like, oh my gosh, I'm in a place where I'm learning so much and Hala really takes me under her wing and I'm and she's so successful and I want to be like her and and getting them towards that journey. And then also keeping it fresh because for me,

it's like once somebody learns something and they do it as good as I would do it, they have to get paid. Or they need to move on to another project that they're learning again from scratch and in a learning environment. So they are getting real economic value in terms of education and you make sure they're really getting it. Exactly. So that's the key. It's like as soon as I feel like they're providing more value than I'm giving them in

terms of the learning that they're getting and the skills that they're acquiring, that's when somebody has to start getting paid officially. All right. So all that sounds like processes and showing up at a certain place at a certain time with a certain, I don't know, curriculum or experience that they can have. I mean, it doesn't sound like you're winging that. Did you put together a system that interns were going to have a six day on ramping and then they were going to have this and then hear where their job descriptions and a little

bit of work involved, right? I think it's gotten more sophisticated over time. I think at first it was very like, you know, they just get to hang out with you. Yeah, you know, we'll take random calls and figure this out together. Then, you know, I think it got a bit more streamlined where we start off the internship program with a bootcamp. And it's like a week long program where you kind of get immersed in everything and we've got all these specific decks and homework assignments that we give

everyone. And then some people don't make it after the boot camp. It's a way for us to kind of weed out people who we think just won't be a fit. All right. Now you got to you have to tell us about that because that's interesting. That sounds like a reality show. Who's getting weeded out? Who what are the characteristics of somebody who's not making it that first week? If they're not showing up to the to the meetings, if they're not even showing up, if they're not submitting their homework on time, if we feel that their work is going to be it's going to be more work to train them than it is to get them up to speed, we know that people are going to be less experienced and not as good. But we need to see that little glimmer of potential

in you. And then you have to be enthusiastic and fit the culture of the team. So you have to just get along with others and be polite and be willing to learn. So the number one thing I look for is somebody who's willing to be coachable. If you don't fit on the initial, like, role that I put you on, I'm happy to move you somewhere else. And I've had great luck with basically, like, for example, I have this girl, Critty, who's worked for me from India. She started as a copywriter and she went to school for copywriting and so I hired her to do copywriting and she wasn't any good but she was so enthusiastic and she just wanted to do anything for me. And so now literally a year later she's running an operations team in India with like 20 people under her and she's a director. You just you would look at the person who was in turning,

you would see if they were really good at something. And then would you create a job for them if they were already good at it? You let the flow, if you will, dictate how this company was going to grow. Exactly. So it's like all these interns and volunteers who started off from me, many of them now are team leaders and have, you know, I have 63 people that work from me right now. And so all these volunteers now have elevated to be like VPs and directors and they're very young still. Many of them have quit their own full-time jobs to work on this company with me. Well, young and profitable, you know, you're not going to have some 75-year-old

in there probably. It's okay to have some young folks in there. All right, let me back up a little bit because now it sounds like we're talking about creating an internship program. And we're coaching people on how to create an internship program. We talk about this all day. How do you recruit? How do you get them to find out about the internship program? Is there an application process and how are you reviewing those applications? Yeah, so that's a great question.

So basically what I've historically done is I've gotten on LinkedIn and I have a large following on LinkedIn that I've grown. And I'll take a selfie video and I'll just say, hey, you know, I'm starting an internship program. If you guys want to apply, there's a Google form. So they fill out a form. I have all the, you know, the job description in the form. I have them submit writing samples. I have them submit their past experiences. And then like I said, we have them in roll in a boot camp. That's a week long. If they show up, if they do their homework and they do a good job, they then start on their internship. And the primary way of us communicating is through

Slack. So Slack has, I feel like I built my business off of the back of Slack. And so just communicating on there, having our little weekly check-ins and everybody kind of has a manager or onboarding buddy that kind of helps support them, but that's typically how we do it. It sounds incredible. And then when you find out they're doing a really good job, let me go back, how are you structuring their educational progress? Do you know, even before the intern comes on,

that this week they're going to look at copywriting and figure out how copywriting works, and then the week after that, they're going to look at copywriting and figure out how copywriting works. And then the week after that, they're gonna be looking at production and figuring out how production works. And then the week after that, they're gonna be looking at marketing and they're gonna figure out how does it work?

No, so basically we have different intern roles per department. So we have social media interns, we have research interns. We have, and those are the two main internship programs that we run. So this is social side and the podcast side. For the social side, they're basically, you know, in the beginning, all we had was interns. So the interns were running everything. Now we have like managers and full-time people and now the interns are kind of underneath everybody's supporting, but it

was very different in the beginning. But essentially, we give them assignments like you are responsible for submitting copy for Instagram for this one client, and then it gets reviewed by somebody who's actually hired an experience. They're doing the real work that somebody's paying for. These are not people who are just shadowing, and it's not take your intern to work day. It's literally... No, no, no. They're literally doing the work.

We have lots of resources about what good looks like. They take copyrighting classes, we do canva classes so they learn how to do graphic design or know what to look for in terms of mistakes from the creative team. We've got lots of best practice documentation. And so the goal is to hire the interns once or done. So for example, I had a cohort of seven interns

last semester, and I hired all seven interns to full-time roles. So the goal is to actually hire them. And so that's their motivation. And a lot of these interns, they come on for 12 hours a week. And if I say, if you work 20 or 30 hours a week, I'll hire you quicker. And it's true, because we get so many new clients and I need trained people. So it's basically my way of getting people

ready so that when I do get a new client, I've got all these people already trained. Are you managing all of this yourself or do you have a team that's managing the internship program? Yeah, I've paid people now. I've now the team is 63 members, but anybody who is a team manager is somebody that I've personally trained. So I have Kate who's like the VP of social. I have a podcast director. I have a business partner.

So we've got lots of great people who are helping me in all of this right now. That sounds incredible. I got to know, is it legal in all 50 states? I'm really curious. Is it legal? And then in their entry level job, what You know, is it legal? And then when they're entry level job, what sort of pay rate are you giving them? Are they minimum wage or how does this scale? I think that's that's a really great question. So internship programs are totally legal. That is totally legal. They can't work over certain amount of hours. I think it's 25 hours a week for

for free. I think it's different across all the states, but I give everybody a stipend. So they're technically not unpaid anymore anymore. I mean, I'm we're all curious. How much is it lunch money? Is it going to pay their rent in a small apartment? Yeah, yeah, what is it? 350 bucks a month. That's nothing. So. Yes, they're going to buy a few meals. Yeah, they're going to buy a few meals. And then my social media managers get paid anywhere from 34 to 45 K a year. So they're doing, how many weeks is the internship program? It's three months, two to three months.

Three months, and then you got a shot at a 35 to $45,000 job. Exactly. That's better than any college anywhere can probably get you. Exactly. And I love taking people who maybe didn't finish college or maybe didn't get the opportunity to go to college. I love giving people that option because we literally teach you everything. And then if you're good, you get a job because I need staff that's trained.

Right. And so we we've historically hired almost every intern that's come through our program. All right. Let's coach everybody. listen, because this is suddenly very exciting and sounds really, really great. You have to have the right kind of business. So if you have 20 people on staff and in two years now, you intend to have 22 people on staff, your internship program probably needs to be skinned a little bit differently than what you're talking about.

You are basically bringing on potential talent and in 12 weeks, really seeing whether they have what it takes, creating a competitive environment, paying them very little, but the best of those, you have jobs that they can actually move into, ready to go. Yep. And there's been situations where I've hired people after a month. Well, you just said you're too good. We're pulling it right now.

Yep. But then a big part of it is they're getting a real business education. I mean, they, let's say they don't, they don't work for you. What sort of things could they put on their resume realistically going somewhere else and their job experience? What sort of things, experience they have? Copywriting, which is huge and so hard to teach people. And it's one of the best skills that you can take in any area of your life. So, I review resumes, that would stand out to me.

If somebody went and learned a right copy from an existing, especially a digital platform organization, I'm gonna look at that. Yeah, client relations, account management, just learning how to deal with clients, attend meetings, put together decks, analytics reporting, learning how to do analytics and reporting for social media, social media management, understanding how like why post-go viral and different

strategies for LinkedIn and Instagram and YouTube and any channel that we manage. They could walk into any small business and on a part-time basis handle their social media. 100%. They could leave your organization after the internship program, go and find five small businesses, charge them $15,000 a year to run their social media. They could run all five and immediately they're an entrepreneur with their own successful organization, making, I mean, you're talking about close to 100 grand and they're, they're an entrepreneur with their own successful organization making, I mean, you're talking about close to 100 grand, and they're, they don't even have a college education, all because of your internship. Yeah, they learn the end-to-end process to manage a social media account, and then on the podcast

side, they learn how to run a podcast. So they learn how to do research, scripting. That's a $40,000 consulting gig for a year. You know, so yeah, I mean, I mean, that's real value. And I think that for everybody listening, if we're going to coach people who are listening, it's if you want an internship program, you got to give a lot. You have to give them real value in that internship program. And then you cherry pick the best to stick with you for another year or two.

How long do they stay? Time will tell that a lot of people have been with us since the start, since I started the podcast three years ago. I've got a lot of the same volunteers and my business partner has been with me since episode number two. So they stick around. I mean, I haven't had too many problems with people leaving and I think part of it is the exciting culture and the fact that they see somebody like Kate, who's my VP of social, who started as an intern last summer and is now leading a team of 30 people and she's young and she's bright and she's my mini me and she's rising up the ranks and getting paid a lot and people see that and they realize that that could be

them in a year. It's just such a quick journey when you're working at a startup to move up. And I think a lot of the young people really see the light there and get excited and want to stick around. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea, but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success. Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University podcast.

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No fillers, no nonsense, just nom nom. Go right now for 50% off your no risk two week trial at trinom.com sash app. That's trinom and om.com sash app for 50% off trinom.com slash. Man, I mean, you know, as a guy who just had a baby, M.E.L.I., she is seven weeks old now. So I think she's probably too young to come on as an internship for you. This is the sort of thing though that as a dad, this is literally the sort of thing I'm looking for.

Like I want to pull some strings and have her in situations like this at 15, 16 years old. I really do. And I know she wouldn't come on staff with you, but hey, go do 12 weeks with Hala and, you know, at 16 years old, your resume is already starting to look better than most of your friends will look when they graduate from college. Yeah.

Right? It's completely true. And honestly, I've found such great talent that is young. And sometimes I just can't believe how smart some of these kids are. Tell me about that because now we've got people out there listening who are saying, oh, come on, there are kids, I got to deal with them, I got to babysit them. Talk us out of that. That's not true about these guys, are they? There is a ramp up period.

What do you mean? Like two weeks of, yeah, like it's like you can't expect that everybody's going to come in first day and knock it out the park. You need to have some sort of structure in place. You need to have some sort of best practice. You can't expect them to invent. I keep saying this, what good looks like. They need to know what that looks like and what the recipe is and how to do it. And also be given the freedom to be creative and knock it out of the park if they want to and go above and beyond the standard, but they need to know what the standard looks like. And without that, then your program is going to fail.

How are you giving them feedback? Is there, is there, do they get a performance review every week, or is that pretty regimented? Yeah, we do, we do performance reviews. We do a midpoint review, which gives us an opportunity to let go of interns who are causing more work than value. So if you're in this internship program, you've been there for 1.5 months or a midpoint time period, and we feel that you're still not getting it and not providing any value, then we let you go at that point so that you can go find something that works for you, or a lot of the times I transfer them from like social media to production, see if they thrive there, give them one more chance, if not, then they're gone.

So I do like to give people multiple chances because sometimes I feel like it's just the wrong role. Like maybe they're just not going to copyrighting, they're never going to get it. And so I move them on to something else and try to give them another shot, especially because it's free. So it's like, what's it's harmed for me to give them another shot, you know? So that's what I typically do. And then

the other thing that we do is that they're always getting their work reviewed. So whether it's by me, whether it's by their manager, you know, they're submitting work, but it's never the final draft. They're always like first draft, and then somebody experiences is reviewing their work so that they can get the feedback. Got it. But the feedback loop is super important. It is. Because then they're they're never going to improve if they don't get that feedback loop. And I also incorporate them as if they're part of the team. So like, our clients don't know their interns. They're on client calls.

To the client, their employees, the client doesn't know who's an intern, who's an employee, and everybody's treated equally. How do you create community? Is community a big part of it? They get to hang out with each other, they get to see each other. And also, is this all virtual? Or are you getting them together in person at all? So most of my team is virtual.

I have people from everywhere. I have my creative team is in the Philippines. My operations team is in India. And then everybody else is in the UK, US, California, Atlanta, Chicago, Florida. You name it, we're everywhere. There's probably only 10 out of the 63 people who are in the tri-state with me.

So I meet up with those people, but if not, it's all virtual. So we do lots of team all hands virtual where everybody has to put their camera on. We have lots of client meetings, we have lots of sub team meetings. So lots of Google Hangout meetings going on and then Slack, like I said,

Slack really was the secret key for me. I feel like I was one of, I mean, I started Slack three years ago before everybody had Slack and it was definitely, I think, one of the main reasons why I'm successful because it enabled me to mobilize this team of volunteers that turned into a big company later on. So, this sounds awesome. I mean, this has been an unbelievably beneficial coaching session to everybody listening to the business made simple podcast. You know, you're, you're literally are making me want to turn around and get on the phone with our president and

say, let's start talking about an internship program because I get really excited about changing lives. One, and I get really excited about helping entrepreneurs figure out how to save years and years and years of frustration. And what better way than when they're young and they're eager and they're looking for an opportunity. I mean, this just sounds really good for a lot of us. Walk me through though. Let's say that I've got, I don't know, an insurance business. I'm an insurance broker. I'm probably not going to scale. How can I have three interns every six months and change their lives and not offer them a job? Am I excluded from what you're talking about or is there something there for me in terms of

the internship? Well, I feel like every business has a possibility to scale. So I feel like if you feel like your business can't scale, then maybe you're thinking about it the wrong way or maybe you're not innovating. The goal for my internship program is that I was able to train people to take things over so that I can create new revenue streams for my business. So now I don't have to work on all that stuff that I knew how to do. I could literally do every job on my team. And I think that's what makes me a good leader, you know? So I train people to do that as good as I would do it

so that I can work on other things. And so I think as a business leader, if you're saying that your business can't scale, maybe you're thinking about it in the wrong way, but I don't think you need to give people a job at the end of it for it to be a rewarding experience for everyone. I don't either. Like I said earlier,

if you, it sounds like if I, if I have a kid who went through your internship program, they're leaving a much more valuable professional than they came in. They're leaving with, I would think what would be, you know, the equivalent maybe of a bachelor's degree in business in terms of practical experience. In fact, it's even better if you had a bachelor's degree

and then you did that internship. I have a lot of people who are graduated college and couldn't get a job and then came work for me and then got a job. There you go, that's real value. The one thing I'll say is that if you don't offer them a job at the end, the motivation might not be there. So because people know that they've seen all these other people get hired from intern

and then rise up the ranks, they're really motivated to stand out and to get that job. Well, if you need a talent pool down there at the $45,000 a year level, and you need to hire people consistently because your business is scaling. This really sounds perfect. But I go back to even if it's just an insurance agent who has three interns creates a little bit of community teaches people the insurance business teaches them copywriting teaches them all sorts of stuff. You got to have a set curriculum If you have people in there and they're licking envelopes and they're going to pick up your dry cleaning that's different. Yeah, exactly That's not a business education. You got to actually put the time into it and give them something of value. I agree. I think that if you have a set curriculum, if you let them know from the start that it is

just a three-month internship program and it will rotate, part of their responsibility is transferring their knowledge to the new intern cohort. I think that will close the loop. So they stay for six months, but in three months, you're rotating constantly, you know, maybe have six interns, three or going in there. Exactly. And then you're making them train each other and they know that it's part of the process for them to move on. You tell them that you're going to help them find their job, be their recommendation, help them with their resume, do something to kind of let them go in a way that they feel like it was a full circle situation and they got something out of it. As long as you're upfront about what you're trying to do, people will do it and stay motivated as long as you're teaching

them the whole time. Paul, thanks for talking to us about an internship program. I think it's huge. I promised at the beginning of our conversation to talk more about what you do, what your interns do, and what your paid professionals do, your big team of 60 something. And that is you help people handle their social media and even scale their social media. You also help them create and distribute podcasts with the intent of social media posts going viral

and podcasts actually being listened to by a bunch of people. There are a lot of people listening who need that service. Will you come back on and let's talk about best practices and social media and podcasts? Oh my gosh, I would love to. That is like my biggest passion is growing social media and podcasts. So I have so much knowledge about that. You won't get me to shut up. So I'm super excited for that conversation. All right. Everybody listening has a promise that within six weeks,

Holly is coming back on to talk about her podcast, Expertise and her social media expertise. We've all got to tackle this. And I can't wait for that conversation. Holly is always wonderful to talk to you. Like I think so much, Donald. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project.

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