Hey, hey, ba fam, It's time for another Halla Back Monday, which is funny because the guests we have on her name is Halla. Anyway, this week we're looking back at our episode with Halla Taha aka the Podcast Princess. Halla is this dynamic, amazing woman. She's the founder and CEO of yapp Media, a business podcast network with an award winning social media and podcast marketing agency for top podcasters, celebrities and CEOs.
There's a lot to learn from Hollo storage job to really give it a listen.
Okay, hey, hey, hey, we're back.
We're black.
Ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition.
Hey manager, how you doing girl?
I'm doing so much better now that I'm here.
Yy, Welcome back in the seal or whatever.
You know.
We have a guest today.
I'm excited, Yes, lovely, And you're a badass business Boddy, which is hard to maintain both and if you kudos.
So I'm gonna introduce these Halla our guests. Halla Taha, dubbed the Podcast Princess, is the host of Young and Profiting yapp podcast, frequently raked as the number one business and entrepreneurship podcast across all of the apps. Okay, Halla is also the founder and CEO of YAP Media, a business podcast network with an award winning social media and podcast marketing agency for top podcasters.
Celebrities and CEOs.
She is well known for her engaged following and influence on LinkedIn. Young and Profiting podcast is a top one hundred podcasts globally, and Halla has interviewed starred studded guests from the likes of Matthew McConaughey, am Alex hormoz On, The Worst, Dpak Chokworld, We Love Deva, David John Saith God who saith Gotten is like the man when it
comes to marketing, and cantless others. Her show was recognized in twenty twenty two as a webby honoree A. You Know we Love webbis around Here and Howa has been featured in publications like Entrepreneur, Founder and.
The New New York Times.
She is an expert on networking, marketing, social media, personal branding, side hustles, entrepreneurship, and podcasting.
Who Hollow We called that? What being a why Holla?
It is?
Also you're a brown girl. How I'm gonna ask you where you're from?
I am brown girl?
Well, where I'm from is super relevant right now. I'm one hundred percent Palestinian. Oh wow, my god, I'm one hundred percent first generation Palestinian. My family is still in the West Bank.
So how are you navigating this really hard time?
Oh, it's been really tough.
It's been like the tough and I'm running such a huge company. I'm one of the few Palestinian voices, so I felt like I had this side hustle I never asked for, of just having to educate people. There's so much misinformation right now, so I'm just trying to just de escalate, and it's just.
A terrible situation. So I'm trying my best. You know.
Yeah, this sound's tough because there's a lot of misinformation going on. There's a lot of emotions, and to be quite honest, a lot of people have literally learned history wrong right, and so Palestinians and Arabic people and Jewish people also are a lot of Jewish people are really aware of the actual facts in history and really against everything that's happening. There's literally apartheide in Israel. You know, this is proven by multiple human rights organizations. I even
as a US citizen, if I go to Palestine. I'm literally treated as an oppressed person who has to drive on separate roads, who has to go through checkpoints, who somebody could kill me in Israel and literally nobody would be prosecuted, nobody would go to jail. It's crazy, right, It's literally crazy. But so many people don't know this information and they just hear like anti semitism or what like, you know, they just go red and they won't even listen to what other people are saying. So it's really
high stakes right now. And as a business person, I'm so lucky because I remember when I worked in corporate I could never talk.
About any of this.
I would, but it would be really looked down on. I still was raising money for Palestine. I always whenever something was going on, I have to say something. There's innocent people at stake and not and the media is controlled, right, so I have to put myself out there. But now as an entrepreneur, I feel really lucky. You know, so many of my clients are Jewish, so many of my friends are Jewish. They know that, like daily I advocate
for everyone, all races, black, white, Jewish, doesn't matter. So my daily actions show that I'm a fair person who loves everyone. So it gives me a platform now to just be able to speak freely. So many of my clients are Jewish and literally they're like, keep talking, You're educating me so much. So it feels good this time around that people are actually listening. But man, it's been a tough week. It's been a tough ten days.
So for those people who are listening to our podcasts who are business people and who want to say something but are not sure. To Mandy's point, when Black Lives Matter came out, I mean, I'm black, Mandy is black, and so I felt more educated to be like, this is what's happening, because this is happening into my community. Are well aware, but I feel like there are a lot of people who want to say something and through their business, but.
Are afraid because I don't know the history. I don't you know.
I've watched a couple of videos and I'm not sure. I'm like, is this the right video?
Is this?
How does one one? Where can we find education? And then two how can we start to integrate that into it? For those who want to speak.
Out, Yeah, I would say number one is seek out Palestinian voices, go follow me on Instagram. There's so many people Sean King is posting a lot of stuff that gives people insight of what's actually going on on the other side.
And you need to.
Proactively seek out these voices because what you watch on TV and in the news is only going to give you one side. One side is literally controlled by propaganda and is basically paid for by the other side, right, And so if you want to seek out other sources, they have to.
Be online on social media.
Seek out Human Rights Watch put out a report about the apartheid, Amnesty International put out a report about the apartheide. You can read through all those reports that will give you all the history, current and previous that you need to understand. And then there's lots of documentaries about Gaza that you can look up and watch. So I would say seek out voices. The other thing I would say is like, you've got to refuse to be called an anti semi when you want to speak about human rights.
So every post that you write, I'm not an anti semit, I am awed to speak freely, and I am pro human rights, I am pro peace, and then start off whatever you're going to say, you know, because that's the one thing that we need to start to isolate is that this.
Is not a religious issue.
This is a human rights issue. There's actually a lot of Jewish people. Jewish people storm the Capitol, Jewish Voice for Peace, if not now or all, these are like huge Jewish organizations that three sixty five days a year, even before this conflict, are trying to work towards equal human rights from Palestinians in a region.
Right.
So there's just a lot going on, and I think the number one thing that I want from leaders, and you know, we weren't expecting to talk about Palestine on this podcast. I do not need to talk about this this whole time. But the number one thing that I think leaders should seriously consider is at least foster a dialogue in your business. At least recognize that the Arabic people and Palastine people that may work for you, they're not doing well right now. They need to be treated
like humans, be given humanity. Their people are literally a genocide is happening in Palestine, and we're hurt. You know, we don't feel like our lives are valued. I think that we're in a very similar spot to how black people felt during black lives matter, when everybody was screaming all lives matter. Meanwhile, we're having a genocide, right, So it's tough. And I think having open dialogue, not persecuting people for speaking out, you know, and advocating for people
to have healthy dialogues with each other. This is the only way that us as a society is going to be able to move forward is if we actually have open dialogues and if people start learning new information on both sides so that we have like more empathy towards each other.
And that takes dialogues.
So not closing down comments when you put up a post, not persecuting people for speaking up, and again just like fostering this open dialogue.
And often getting out of the way of people like yourself and.
Letting you Yeah, I don't know how many people have.
Maybe I don't need to make a statement. Maybe I need to amplify a statement that you make exactly.
And I have everybody who knows me personally, they're like, holl to keep going, like we love you, blah blah blah.
Then I have these strangers that don't know.
Me that are like you're an anti semi how like you're spreading misinformation and like harassing me. And it's like, bro, like, I'm literally Palestinian and have lived the apartheid myself. Do not gaslight me about what is truth and what is not for me.
Yeah, And it's crazy when you come from a group that is largely oppressed and then the world tells you like may not. You're like, I'm sorry, I look like this every day. I know the feeling. I know what it feels like to navigate from a space of having less than for no other reason than you know, the origin of my birth. And so you know, I just it's been really, really, really and I just have felt hands tacked.
I'm like, I'm not really sure because I'm not afraid to say something.
It's just I didn't feel educated enough to join the conversation, you know, because I'm just like, I mean, but I know the murder is wrong, no matter what side, and I know that lives have been taken on both sides, and I just feel like, across the board, that's wrong, you know. But I also know, you know, from because I am black and visibly black, that for brown people across the world, that often our voices are more easily suppressed.
I mean, I'm seeing there was this. I just was reading this morning on like ink dot com that there's this conference in that they do every year in Europe. I think it's called like the Global or something Summit, and the CEO or the whatever. The conference leader let me s if I can find it. He said something that just basically said, like, you know, like killing people is wrong and that genocide is not okay. Facebook dropped out of the conference. Google dropped out of the conference, and.
I was like, wait, it is it wrong to say they?
So he literally he didn't say I'm with It's just hey, like genocide is not okay, killing people is not okay. We should have peace, just that simple. And people are dropping out because like, what are we saying so it is okay to kill people? I just I'm confused about what the pushbacks.
It's really crazy because at this point it's not about being pro Palestinian, it's about being anti genocide right, because both sides have done wrong things right since nineteen forty eight. I can give everybody a quick history lesson about why this all started. Right nineteen forty eight, after World War Two, Britain sent Jewish refugees from World War Two to Palestine.
Okay.
At this point, Palestinians welcome Jewish people with open arms. They even let them in their homes and everything was okay.
A year later, the.
British armed Jewish people to take over Palestine. They forcibly drove out eight hundred thousand people out of five hundred villages. They killed fifteen thousand people. These are the descendants of the people in Gaza right now. They're refugees that were literally forcibly removed from their homes. People are still living in homes that they have that Palestinans have the keys.
To their homes.
Their grandmothers still have the keys of their homes. There's Jewish settlers and people in Israel who literally live in the same homes that Palestinians used to live in. They have a saying they took it fully furnished, because they literally just moved into people's houses with their furniture.
Okay.
And so these people are now in Gaza as refugees and they've been blockaded for sixteen years. They're not allowed to leave. They're blockaded from Egypt and Israel, not allowed to leave. And these people Hamas who committed the actions on October seventh have been under blockade. Most of these people are between seventeen and thirty seven years old, most of either their entire lives or most of their lives. Not even allowed to leave Gaza, Okay. They're trapped in
an open air prison. A better name for it is a concentration camp. Because they committed no crime other than being palace. They're not allowed to leave a city that is the size of Detroit, Okay, and it is.
Blocked off by a wall.
And that is one part of the occupied territories in Israel. The other occupied territory is the West Bank. And so the West Bank is a small piece of land that was given to the Palestinians. It is occupied. People have to drive on separate roads, their water is rationed. All this is all controlled. There's checkpoints and so on. And again, if somebody gets killed in the West Bank, there's no
persecution of any Israeli that did it. And people are still stealing people's homes, demolishing homes, stealing land, and they're just taking over more and more of the West Bank. They don't respect the boundaries that they gave the Palestine people before this conflict. Two hundred and fifty people were murdered, including forty seven children, by Israeli radical settlers. Nobody talks
about this, right, so it was not unprovoked. It was seventy six years of oppression and literally like violence ongoing to Palestinians constantly.
They're basically controlled.
It's like segregation like how it was back in the day in America, right, that is what's going on in the region. And so then this Hamas attack happened. Of course, nobody can doone that, but we can't help for people to be radicalized. If they're literally trapped behind a wall and have don't have equal rights and they're you know, family is killed, bombed every five years and whatever, right, people are obviously going to become radicalized. They're not treated equally.
So that's the root cause of the problem, and that's what people need to get educated on.
I can't imagine. I mean, I mean, I don't feel like this just it lakes me so sad and heartbroken beyond the stories that I've heard, And there are some journalists out there who are working really hard to get in touch with Palestinian voices because like electricity is not you know, something that you can take for granted there a lot of places don't have I heard that some people are using car batteries because they have anticipated power
outages before. Yeah, car batteries just to charge their phone, solar panels just to get electricity. But anyway, it's hard to communicate. But the stories that I have heard of young twenty somethings, families who will just get a phone
call and say, this is the Israeli Army. We're letting you know there's going to be a strike, get out now, and then they don't know if that's real or if they need to like pack up and leave, and that state of high alert, that state of fear, and I know that it's been going on for decades as you've described, Like that's for me, it's never okay. And I feel like we just don't learn from our own frickin history. I know it's great for I and A does not equate peace.
I mean, what happened is that people came over from World War Two after the Nazis and everything, and they came to Palestine like ready to do anything to just survive, and they put all that evil negativity on the Palestinians
and then just did it. Did this same thing that happened to them, literally to the Palestinians, and we had nothing to do with the Holocaust, right, So I feel that the Palestinians have taken the brunt of the Holocaust, like all the pain and the terror and everything has just for seventy six years, Palestinians have been unrightfully punished for something they did not do.
So I remember I went to Jordan earlier this year, and I just couldn't believe the separation, like, oh, what is the river that Jesus was baptized in the Jordan river? And I just remember being like wow, there's literally like this line and they made it very clear, do not. I I was in Jordan on the Jordan side, do not get close to this life. And the river wasn't it wasn't a part of the river that was very wide.
It was it wasn't as wide as a street like you know, and like I just remember thinking like wow, like you know, for so many people, you know, like whether you're Christian or Jewish or or Muslim, since it's a figure in all three of those like religious whatever that figure takes on, whether it's a prophet or savior or whatever.
But I just remember thinking, how sad is it.
That this important, beautiful place to these three religions is radicalized where I can be in the water that's clearly touching both sides, but I can't get close to this imaginary line that men have created.
And I just thought, wow, it just.
Seemed it was such a beautiful place Jordan, but this underlying sense of like impending violence, and I just remember thinking like it just seemed that part just hit me as really sad, like.
Yeah, yeah, I think the craziest part of all this, Tiffany and Mandy is the misinformation going on, and like the bubble that Israelis have lived in. You know, they get their birthrate paid for the American Jewish people, right, they go over to Israel, and they don't see the occupied territories.
They see the few people.
There's like two million Poustinians or Arab Israelis they call them, that live in Israel, that.
Sort of have equal rights. So people teach them that.
See, these are the Palestinians. They live freely with us. But it's really not the whole story. They don't show them the West Bank, they don't tell them about Gaza, they don't tell them they're not even allowed to learn about the Nepka in history in Israel, so they don't
even know that happened. They don't know that, like it started with ethnic cleansing, and so there's just all this misinformation and essentially me having an identity of being Palestinian, it is threatening to anybody who has an Israeli identity
because it threatens their identity. So they want to act like we don't exist, or we were a lost people, or Israel was a land with no people, but in reality, we were ethnically cleansed, and even now Gaza is being ethnically cleansed with they forced a million people to move out of their homes and they bombed all their homes. Now those million people they have nowhere to go. They might end up going to Egypt or Syria yea, and they're just again like moving more Palestinians out.
The last thing I'll.
Say about this is that there's five million Palestinians still living in the occupied territories of Palestine which are now Israel, and there's like seven or eight million Israelis. It's like literally almost half the people are still Palestinian there, and there's like ten million Palestinians outside of there that basically are refugees now not allowed to go back.
So it's a big issue.
Like there's people who are alive today that both think that they're Palestinian. There's people alive today that believe there Israeli.
We need to figure it out. We need to live in peace together.
Yeah, Nope, but thank you so much for I think it's so great to get a perspective.
This was not our intention we brought. Yeah, but I'm glad.
I'm like, it's just so crazy, like what I.
Want to give you.
I know you're so passionate about it, as you should be, and this is the moment, and I'm so glad that we have a platform we can share with you and that you're using your own for that.
Yeah.
Oh, I feel like we need a little deep breath moment. How do you, I know, to take care of yourself in your palestinianbns? You know anyone who's affected by this.
Where honestly, like it really sucks guys, Like there's not a lot of us, not a lot of us with a voice, And literally I feel like I can't even grief.
I can't even grieve.
All I have to do is just spend every second I have just trying to educate and post and like battling harassment online for telling the truth. And like, thank god, honestly, like all there's two communities that are helping us, Black black the black community is helping us.
Thank god.
This is really the first time that like really the black community is mobilizing and supporting us and Jewish people, Jewish people who know what's going on. And now we never really had other communities supporting us, and now we have these two communities really helping to amplify our voices, and it feels like maybe there will be some real change.
Yeah, I have to say, that's where I heard about the most, which I love because you're right, because as coming from a population that has also often been oppressed, you get to see you're like.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what's going on?
And you know, if you know, especially black women, that's where I've seen so many because I don't necessarily I mean other than you, how I don't know if I know anybody else that's Palestinian, you know, And so a lot of the information that I've gotten have been from
black voices that have shared other Palestinian voices. Yeah, and I'm just like wait, and so as I'm reading and I'm learning about I'm loving is that I see a lot, especially like the black influencer women are posting for better understanding, and then you see people angry and you're like, well, she's allowed to say I don't know much about this topic if you can share respectly in the comments, because I'd love to learn, because I'd love to support humanity overall.
And people get really, really really angry at that. And so that's very telling when you say I believe that people shouldn't be murdered and people get mad at that.
Well, it's just it's i think one of the biggest polarities in all all this or like issues is that, like it's just call spade a spade. Palestinian lives are not valued as much as Israeli lives, and that's literally what's going on. You know, like fourteen hundred innocent Israeli civilians died and that's terrible, and now five thousand Palestinians have died, mostly literally children like babies are just getting murdered and blown up, and everyone's like they deserved it.
It's retally like.
There's like what do you We're defending ourselves, defending yourself from what from little babies who literally didn't vote for Hamas, Like we need to be fair and like just all human lives need to be treated equally and that that's like I think what all the Palestinians are crying about. We don't we're not supporting Hamas. It's but we can't control Hamas. And until the occupation is over, Hamas is not going away because they're resisting against uh not having
freedom right. So it's just we just need a bloodshot to stop. And I hope it stops because I need to focus on works.
A family usedtill have family there.
I have family in the West Bank, So the West Bank there's lots of you know, violence and subtle violence, but they're not getting bombed like Gaza is, so they're okay. Hopefully they'll be okay. But yeah, I don't have family and gossip in your.
Family, Like your immediate family are they here in the US? When did you come to the US?
I was born in the US, so my immediate family is in the US, but like all my dad's like brothers and sisters and stuff, and my moms are in Palestine and some in Jordan. To your point, Tiffany, a lot of Palestines are in Jordan, And.
What's one thing have you visited? I'm sure you have, But when's the last time you were able to visit Palestine?
I have not been back in twenty years. I used to go every summer. We have a house there, we have land there. It's not safe for me, I, like I said, I could get I'm treated like a Palestinian even though I'm a US citizen once I go there. So again, I'm like, I could literally be killed by an Israeli subtler and nothing would happen. And so it's just too dangerous for me. And I think I'd be targeted because I have such a big platform and stuff. I think they'd really give me a big problem.
I mean, if you could share one happy memory or like like a picture of your childhood even in Palestine, just for people to sort of show like there was a time, yeah, when you were a child there and felt safe.
Maybe I never I always experienced the apartheid, but it definitely was safer than now.
But you know, I remember I would.
Always like walk to this store, like they had dirt roads, right so it's like didn't have paved roads, and all my cousins were there. They're all my age, and everybody's like really open where you can just like I didn't.
Ever call to go over my aunt's house, you know.
I would just like wake up, knock on her door, and she'd come make me breakfast, and then I'd go, you know, take a walk and like check out the olive trees and the fig trees with my cousins and climb trees and just be kids, you know, find like stray dogs and puppies and take care of them, or like little birds and take care of them and stuff
like that. So we were just like regular kids, just you know, enjoying the outdoors and you know, and then in the meanwhile of all that, there'd be like a Israeli tank driving by, like and that was normal, right.
I always think to myself, like, because I taught in New York for so many years, and the area especially that I taught and sometimes get quite violent where there might be gunshots, there might be And I always thought to myself, no matter where the worst of the world shows up, there's always kids, beautiful kids playing and laughing and somehow able to eke out some joy in the worst parts of the world, and that always gave me a little bit of hope, you know, Like you know,
that's why it's so heartbreaking to see here what's happening. But it's just like it's just it's this strange juxtaposition that like it could really be this war torn area, and kids will find a way to play and laugh and enjoy each other in the midst of all the terribleness. They will find the little piece of joy available and then use use it up the most. But so I'm glad you were able to have some good memories. I
think maybe we should take like a cleansing money. Yeah, we're gonna come back and talk a little bit about business.
Yeah yeah, yeah.
All right, So we're gonna take a break, pay a couple of bills. Everybody, take a whosa, breathe in, breed that, and we'll be right back. All right, guys, we are back.
From a break. So we're gonna switch gears a little bit because.
Halla is like quite big time and business, right and we want to really lean into it.
And I don't know if you have time to stay with us. We do. We also tape.
We call our ba q a where we answer questions about entrepreneurship, business, and and money. So we would love for you to maybe answer answer some business entrepreneurship questions. Yeah, perfect, great, So so yeah, so so, I mean it's hard to switch on like my brain, it's.
Like ooh, yeah, I know, that's just.
Like so twenty twenty three, I had found how that has been. I would say eighty percent of my friends that are in business, including myself, had a harder time in twenty twenty three than like then it's been in a number of years, and it was kind.
Of a hard business year.
Have you seen that kind of like trend in your business and your business friends and what can people do to kind of like you know, like what are your suggestions of what have you done to make sure that business still runs despite whatever it happened in twenty I don't know what happened in twenty twenty three, but I feel.
Like there was a bit of a squeeze for most people.
Yeah, I definitely think the first half of the year was really just slow and brutal for us. At least my company like rocked it second half of the year. So I would say, always be proactive in your sales generation. So for me, it was just trying to come up with creative ideas in order to reach for me with the sponsorships for my network, reaching out to as many brands as possible, and just coming up with unique ideas
in order to get leads for our business. Obviously every business is different, but I would say putting yourself out there.
Creating a personal brand, of course, is just.
Something that I talk a lot about and then just proactively generating leads rather than just expecting them everybody to just like find you. You've got to put yourself out there, create content, and so talk about.
Your type of business. So you're speaking about yat met yeah, which is primarily a podcasting network or do you have other types of media that yes, okay.
So yeah, we're a podcasting network where we sign on shows.
We have shows like Jenna.
Kutcher's Gold Digger, Amy Porterfield, John Lee Dumas, so we've got a lot of big shows and we help people get sponsors and we also help to grow people's shows. So that's one aspect of my business. And then I have a social media agency where the number one LinkedIn marketing agency and a podcast production agency as well, so I've got social clients, podcasts, clients, network client.
And what about the team sort of, I was trying to get a picture of the team that supports you and do you and which arms of those businesses do you feel like has been more you know, contracting in this past year where you've had to be creative.
Yeah, So I have a big team.
I have about fifty people who work at YAP Media, a big team for the social side especially, and I think the most difficult thing was in the beginning of the year we lost some social clients because everybody was basically hurting in their business and one of the first things they're going to pull is marketing budget for something like social rights. So we lost a lot of clients.
And unfortunately, the social side of the business is really talent heavy, and so that caused me to have to like let go of some people, which was really tough because it was nothing with their performance, but it was just because we didn't have a lot of clients, and I sort of had to consolidate and restructure the social team so that it would be more flexible as clients leave and come and so on. Now we're like fully stacked.
I'm hiring again and all this stuff. But it's scary because again, if the economy goes bad again, people are gonna pull out and I'm gonna have to, you know, downsize my team. So agencies that are talent heavy are really tough in these economic times because you're always having to scale down talent scale up talent. The network side is really scalable. I have like a five person team, and whether we have like twenty podcasters or fifty podcasters,
it's really the same sized team. So that's a little bit more scalable, and that's one of the reasons why I've been moving toward and focusing more on growing my network, because it's not so talent heavy, understood.
Yeah, And they're not actually yeah exactly, they're not on your payroll necessarily, they're not w two workers. And is it that often the podcast that you acquire sort of have their own develop their own production team already, they just need that addition exactly.
So with ads, we just we just do the sponsorships and it's like the bigger the show. It's the same amount of war, but we get paid a lot more money because you get paid per download, per commercial. Right, So if I sign on a huge show. It's the same amount of work if I sign on a small show. And so therefore it's like a very scalable opportunity. I just have to keep signing really big shows and not necessarily having to hire.
Like every time I get like.
Three new clients for social, I have to stand up a whole new social team where I could hire or bring on like twenty podcasters and bring on one person to support them or something.
You know, So, howy you said something about being the number one LinkedIn marketing team, So like what does that mean?
Like, what does LinkedIn marketing? What is that?
Yeah, so we're the number one LinkedIn marketing agency. A lot of the influencers on LinkedIn, like Marshall Goldsmith, Matt Higgins, Heather Monahan, myself, it's my team actually behind the scenes running their whole LinkedIn And so for.
That, thanks for just telling me that they ain't doing it alone, because.
I need to hear that my clients don't do like we do everything like a to Z and that includes creating the content, posting it up, responding to comments, and then the real secret sauce on LinkedIn is the DM direct message campaigns and so we're doing all these like direct message campaigns twenty four to seven driving ROI initiatives.
Right, that's called DM campaign. So do you have like a bot that or do you have people?
So we it's people mostly virtual assistance in the Philippines. I have about twelve people in the Philippines whose full time jobs are just dming people on LinkedIn, and so we do all these different campaigns. Like so, for example, with my podcast, we send out about one thousand dms a day to entrepreneurs to listen to young in profiting soliciting our new episode, and then if they respond positively, we then ask them to write us a review. So
that's like one example of a DM campaign. Another one would be like, let's say one of our clients has a new book coming out. Every time they put up a post about their book, anybody who likes and comments, we then retarget in the DMS. Hey, I noticed that you liked my post about my upcoming book. I'd love for you to check out the pre order. You can get this free thing x y Z here.
So that's such a good tip, even for someone like me who has one admin to like as a task, just look at my comments and if people like it. Oh yeah, sounds so simple.
Well, that's called permission based marketing, right, So they took the first action. They're essentially raising their hand and saying you have permission to reach out to me. If you ever reach out to anyone saying hey, I notice you engaged on this post. They'll never be like, screw you, you spammed me because they took.
The first action.
So it's a great way to establish common ground and get the conversation going.
So what does it look like to work with you like this? Does it like?
So? Because I think a lot of like especially entrepreneurs, you know, they're thinking like, oh I might want to work with an agency, but I don't have any money, you know, or like I don't have enough of a budget.
What does that look like?
Is it largely like sponsors pay you, so they're not paying and you kind of just split this profits. Are people really paying out of pocket?
Like?
What does that look like? Yeah?
So for my social clients, they're paying out of pocket and we're like a White Glove award winning social media agency, so we're not cheap. So it's usually really big CEOs influencers, and our minimum retainer is ten thousand dollars a month, and that's just LinkedIn, right, if you add on Instagram, it's more so we're typically not able to service most people because we have such a high ticket offer and I essentially need to hire five people to run someone's account.
It's really intensive, right, But I have a LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. The next one is de Summer thirteenth and fourteenth, and basically I have a two day training where I take everyone through what I teach my team about.
How to hack LinkedIn. So we go over creating a.
Personal brand, copywriting design, and then day two is all about the algorithm, engagement hacks, DM campaigns, and I basically teach the same thing that I teach my team, and a lot of people will like send in their social lead or send in a couple of team members and then they're literally up to speed.
And I've created influencers.
I started this about a year ago and there's been like dozens of influencers that have come out of this program.
Is that the goal, like you're teaching them how to then become have a bigger platform, grow their you know and yeahs.
Get engagement, increase their sales, start a personal brand and like I said, like literally have created entrepreneur influencers from.
Strench who How much is the work the two day workshop?
Usually with we give promo codes, so it's about like seventeen seventeen hundred dollars, it's two thousand dollars, and then we usually give like thirty if.
You work for a company and you're in marketing, like I would take that, you know, like your company would take that for it, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's and people don't use their professional development funds enough. They just don't think about it. And they also may say like, oh, I just have a I heard I have a cap of like five hundred. Well make a case, you know, have a case for it.
Well, I'm happy to give you guys a promo code and you can get a referral fee for anybody who signs on who listens to this podcast if you want.
Maybe even have done that before. I'm just like it sounds good.
We haven't done that.
Yeah, okay, oh yeah, it's the promo code that you want.
Ooh, brown Ambition.
We usually use brown Ambition for.
Yeah, we use Brown Ambition together. All right, If you guys want thirty five percent off of you, guys five percent off. You can go to yap media dot io slash course and use code brown ambitions.
Our one word and we'll do We'll put the link in the description.
Okay, perfect, I have it.
You said December. When is it again?
December thirteenth and fourth?
All virtual, I'm assuming.
Okay, yeah, it's all virtual, but it's me teaching live and guys, this has gotten like twelve.
Out of ten raving reviews.
I've had maybe three hundred students go through and never had a refund. Everybody has said it's been like one of the best master classes they ever took, and so I know anyone who takes it is gonna really like the class.
Okay, that sounds great.
Yeah.
So what was your first like what was your kind of hero business like? For me, it was a bunjeanista. I used to teach you one on once when you first got into to business like, what did that look like?
What was the first thing that you started with?
Well, I had a crazy You didn't ask anything about my background.
My background is crazy to I had a crazy background. So I started off working at Hot ninety seven when I was in college for three years.
I was Angie Martinez his.
Assistant oh New York, Yeah, unpaid assistant for three years. So I was essentially a glorified intern. That was like the foot of the intern.
You can't do that anymore, that's.
Illegal now, But that was like what everybody did at Hot ninety seven before. So I thought I was going to be the next Angie Martinez. I ended up leaving because they didn't give me a paid job, and I got upset. Me and Angie riifye now and I started a blog site called the Sorority of Hip Hop dot com Strawberry Blunt dot com.
I was bad girl back.
Then, and the podcast, sorry, the website blew up. It was like in twenty ten when like.
Blogs were super hot.
We were like, you know, up there with rap radar and all those other types of blogs. We almost had a show on MTV. They filmed me all summer. I was going to be the lead of a show right after they ended Jersey Shore, and I was like hosting parties at the time with this blog side and everything like this.
MTV backed out two weeks before they were supposed to air the show.
I was devastated because by then I got rejected from Hot aty seven. I also was swaying the morning's co host for two weeks, and then they.
Fired me after two weeks.
And then I didn't get MTV, and so I had all these at bats but didn't make it. So then I got like sort of thought, all right, maybe this isn't for me.
Let me go into corporate.
I worked at HP, then Disney, and I started my podcast Young In Profiting about four years into my corporate career when I just fell bored and wasn't doing it for money. I was just thought, you know, I know how to do this. Podcasts are hot now. I had all the online radio shows working on the side of Hot ninety seven, and when I had the blog site, so I knew a lot about radio and production, right, Okay, let me just do this, And so I started this podcast.
By episode two, I had ten volunteers in a Slack channel. I had all these fans on LinkedIn because I started my LinkedIn journey at this point that would reach out to me and be like, I just want to help your show change my life. And so I knew how to do all these different things audio editing, video editing, social media, blog posting, building websites. I knew all this different marketing stuff, so I started taking these volunteers and
then teaching them things. I taught one guy how to do videos, one guy how to do a website, one girl how to do my social Then fast forward two years later, my show's like really big, and all the guests that are coming on my show are these rich CEOs, authors, influencers, And at the end of my show, I kept getting asked the same question, how did you build your LinkedIn?
Can you do this for me?
How did you grow your podcast? Can you do this for me? And I had all these volunteers, and I would always say, like, I'm so sorry, I just have a volunteer team. I've got a corporate career. This is just for fun. Until COVID hit and I found myself with all this free time, and a couple of these guests on my show were being very persistent about being my clients, and then I just started taking my first clients. My second client, Guys, was a thirty thousand dollars retainer
a month. Oh my second client, and so within six months my company was already making one hundred grand a month. I had thirty paid employees around the world. Quit my job, and just the rest is history. Now I'm like, you know, my company is making probably almost five million dollars by the end of the year this year. So it's been an awesome journey of just lots of struggle until one time it hit, you know, and then I just kept rolling with it.
CEO, like, do you have other executive level support alongside you? I do?
I do.
I'm definitely the CEO and founder, but I have Jason who is one of my executives, and Kate, and so Jason helps me run the network, Kate helps me run the social media agency. I'm really in charge of, like at this point, sales, new business. I recruit podcasters, closed sponsorship deals, and close social deals. But other than that, I just have everybody doing everything else, and I just kind of think of new ideas.
It sounds like you've gotten to that nice place where instead of doing everything, you can sort of like focus on your zone and genius. Is that right? Is that how you feel?
Yeah?
I think one of my key reasons for being so successful is my ability to delegate, because even because I had started this podcast as a side hustle, so from the start, I've been delegating to all my volunteers.
So from the start, I always had.
A remote team and people to help me, and I just I'm really good at just like letting go and teaching people and then letting them take it on and elevating them.
You know, well, I love me some ones. Did I talk over you again?
You Okay?
No?
I was just going to say that, Like, so what you know?
So you have these businesses, these kind of successful, successful subsidiaries of the original business, Like.
Where do you see yourself?
And then that's like five to ten years, Like what's what's the desired outcome for when it all shakes out?
Well?
Building this podcast network. We're already just one year in.
I've signed like.
Huge podcasts, Like I told you, I've got Jenaicature, Amy Porterfield, Trent Shelton, Like, I just got all these huge names.
We're crushing it.
I want to be as known as like Wonder he is in this space in terms of a podcast network, right, I really think that's going to happen within the next year. We're already, you know, up there with all the major networks.
Already.
I'm writing books, so like personally, I'm going to put out a book in twenty twenty five hopefully, So I don't have a name yet. It's all just getting started now. So like I just signed a contract, ex thank you, thank you, uh so, going to be writing a book, going to be putting out I'm sure I'll put out a podcast course, But really it's just honestly growing by network and we're the only network that has a full service social media arms. So we're not just monetizing people's podcasts.
We're monetizing their YouTube or monetizing their social branded content, and then we're able to.
Execute on all of it on their behalf.
So it's a really innovative approach and there's no other networks that are really even competing with us in this space.
I want to go back to LinkedIn because I love it so much, and I'm actually I have I have a community of women called the Mandy Moneymakers Women of Color, and it's career coaching, and my specialty is negotiations. I live for the high and the thrill of a negotiation. I would love to know though, because it seems like with LinkedIn you're sort of maybe working with people who are using it for their businesses or for their brands. I work with women who want to use it to
amplify their career and maybe build a brand. Do you have any like keys to LinkedIn that you can share. I'm curious. It sounds like you know some stuff even I don't know, So I want to learn like three keys to maximizing LinkedIn right now that we can sort of take away.
Yes, so three tips for LinkedIn.
LinkedIn right now is prioritizing meaningful content, which means that you want to focus on your keywords. You want to make sure that your profile has keywords that are aligned to your niche that people would be searching for that keyword on LinkedIn, And then you want to make sure that your posts also include those same keywords that might be found in your first connections following that have those
keywords in their profile. That way LinkedIn can basically match your post and serve them to people who have those keywords in their profile. So again, LinkedIn is looking for experts. So if you put up a post and it has a keyword, like let's say you're in real estate, you put up a post that has the real estate keyword, your profile is validated that you're a real estate expert.
You've got that keyword, you've got people who have like put skills related to real estate on your profile, and so LinkedIn can validate through their algorithms that you're an expert. Now LinkedIn is going to serve that real estate post to other people who have real estate in profile in their first connections. If those people engage on your posts, they're going to share it with those people's followings who are likely in the same industry niche, and.
Then you'll have more visibility.
Right. The second thing to note is that shares is really where it's at on LinkedIn. Every single viral action on LinkedIn is actually weighed differently. So alike, for example, is one point, a common is two points, a share is four points. So if you want to go viral, you always need to optimize for shares, and that means that you want to have shareable content. Most of the sharable content is typically inspirational or motivational because they're most relatable to the broadest audience.
Right.
Educational content is also really sharable. It's not as sharable, but it will be shared in a more targeted niche way. Right, So you always want to optimize for shares. So that's the second point, and the third point is you want to understand all the different engagement hacks on LinkedIn and the little nuances because on LinkedIn, it's not really about your content.
It's about how you post.
Up your content that's more important than the actual content itself. So, for example, in your caption, if you're trying to go viral, you should not link out to an external third party link because LinkedIn's.
Goal is to keep people engaged on.
The platform for as long as possible, So you never want to bring them to like YouTube, for example in the caption, because LinkedIn will suppress the post. There's also all these different like other spam filters that you need to avoid, such as like chunky paragraphs. People like to skim because everybody's reading on mobile, so you want to
have like line by line content on social media. A paragraph is really one or two sentences, not three to five sentences, right, So you want to have paragraph breaks and make it more skimmable in terms of your caption and as short as possible. Also, you want to make sure, like I said, that you have got keywords in your post. You want to make sure you're using hashtags correctly three hashtags max. Right, So a lot of people put too
many hashtags. It's not Instagram. You'll actually hurt yourself if you put too many hashtags. You shouldn't tag people who aren't going to engage on your posts. So there's so many different like little nuances and hacks that you need to learn when it comes to LinkedIn.
Okay, that's I mean, that's some great takeaways for now, and I feel like that's always changing. So when it comes to following those shifts. And for example, I used to work in SEO marketing, so we were constantly obsessed with what Google was doing and thinking and feeling all the time. And they would like put out these reports once a year on like their eight score, which is expertise off. I forget all of them. I haven't been in there in a minute. But anyway, so where are
you tracking the trends of LinkedIn? Are you just seeing it because you're in it so much?
Well, I'm an influencer myself, and because I'm running most of the influencer accounts, I see the trends right away.
We have all these social dashboards where I.
Can see like the assets, hype, the engagement and so on, and so I can see right away. For example, polls were really popular, then they become unpopular, and now they're popular again. And I can see those fluctuations. Right, Hey, we put out a poll and everybody did good this week. Let's keep testing poles and see how they do. Right, So I see the trends really quickly because of that and can validate things like that.
Am So I feel it's so crazy because you know, when LinkedIn first came out, it was like this is where you go to get a job.
Yeah, he and so like what if you're you know.
And if you're someone who thought that that's all LinkedIn could be good for? So what are the other ways that people can maximize LinkedIn? Not just coming here to look for a job. That's great, but what are the other things like you can Oh, LinkedIn.
Is awesome, So let me give you a stop.
There's one hundred and thirty five million active daily users on LinkedIn that are looking at content. Guess how many people are actually creating content? What percentage of that one thirty five million do you guys think are creating percent?
What do you say is right?
Five five percent? Five percent of people are only creating content?
So there's so much like room to grow there's not a lot of competition, and if you know the engagement hacs, like if you took my class, for example, anybody who takes my class from the first week, they're getting three hundred likes on their stuff, like they're doing really well and getting a lot of visibility because there's not a lot of competition, especially if you sort of know how to leverage the algorithm to your benefit, so you can become the dominant person in your niche on LinkedIn, and
that can give you a lot of leverage. The other reason why it's especially great for business owners is because it allows you to do really great proactive lead generation. You can send out an unlimited amount of dms. There's a couple different hacks, like, for example, you can join a group.
And on LinkedIn.
You guys, if you're not really LinkedIn savvy, you may not know this, but you're only allowed to DM your first connections, right, But you can unlimitedly DM your first connection. So let's say you get up to the limit of
thirty thousand first connections. You can DM those thirt thousand connections about one thousand or two thousand a day and generate leads just through those thirty thousand connections, So it's always a goal to try to reach and get those thirty thousand connections with people who are in your target audience for your business. Right outside of that, you can join groups that have your target audience, and once you're
in that group, you can then DM everybody in that group. So, for example, when I'm soliciting my LinkedIn masterclass, I'll join all the social media groups and I'll be dming people to join my masterclass, and I get so many leads in business and business folks that way. The other thing that you can do is just understand the titles that you're looking for, who typically buys from you, and then proactively invite those people to your network and then again DM them and start a.
Campaign with them.
So there's no other platform like that that you can like search. LinkedIn has all these different search attributes. You can search by locations, title, company, you know, so many different search factors, and also by behaviors, the events they sign up for, the groups they sign up for, the people they engage with, and then you can retarget them in the DMS, which is really different from any other
social platforms. So when somebody comes to me for social media and they're like a coach or they have some sort of B to B business, anybody who basically offers a service that's not necessarily like a product. Right, products don't do that well on LinkedIn, but any services do. I'm always like, LinkedIn is where I'm going to get you ROI. Let's start with LinkedIn. I'll get you ROI. Then you can go onto other platforms because that's it's the easiest place.
To make money online. Honestly, it's crazy.
I'm just looking at my LinkedIn I never want I'd never go on and I'm looking. I'm like, I've got twenty thousand followers. I'm leaving a lot of money on the table.
Huh.
Yeah, we could ten x that if you want some any.
Yeah, but I'm like, I wouldn't.
I guess I haven't really thought about like what do I find them, what do I need from them?
What do I know?
Like like yeah, it just would be thinking about.
Like what what's you know? What's this product?
Well, like your podcast would be a good one to get people to subscribe and review your podcasts, And then don't you have a core or something like that?
Yeah? I do.
I have an online school deliver with your academy. I mean, it's not that we don't have it's just that I never thought about. You know, I'm on there. You know we have our but I just you know, people will ask to connect and be a part of my network, and I'm just like sure, you know, I just looked.
I was like this, twenty thousand shores. That's a lot.
I use LinkedIn heavily for my business as a career negotiation coach. It makes so much sense. And I use not as much from the to DM people that's really smart, to like DM people who follow you, but a lot of leads that come into my even my freebie, you know, my negotiation scripts come from LinkedIn. And then also I think second to that is reels. You know, reels are super powerful. Do you help with like other platforms as well or just LinkedIn?
Yeah, we do, Instagram, YouTube, threads, Twitter, but really it's LinkedIn and Instagram is the main focus in terms of growth.
What I love about LinkedIn too for people because I deal with a lot of women who are like wet make it. I don't want to learn the new TikTok dance and do the reels to get business, just like the new blog, you know.
And also the best performing asset is a picture and a story, right, So videos don't even work well on LinkedIn. We didn't talk about that. So videos don't even work well. And that's the most time consuming and most expensive thing to create on LinkedIn. You just need photos and like meaningful content, educational content and stories and you'll do great.
You have me looking at LinkedIn like, hey girl, you might see me a little more.
Well.
We want you know, we want to respect your time because we want to have you on for our b a QA. We just want to yes, thank you so much, holla you one. Thank you for being so vulnerable and open, you know, as a Palestinian about what's happening and just giving us, you know, educating us on some which I'm sure so many of our listeners have never really known or heard before, and maybe you have.
But to hear.
From someone who gets to experience and said, you know, from that group, I think is really critical. So thank you for sharing your voice in that way. But also thank you for being this amazing business woman that was able to pivot and then share like all this insights about what does it look like to market yourself? What does it look like to grow a business, and you know, what does it look like to pivot when you get so many knows it'd be so easy to give up,
and you didn't. So we really thank you for sharing all parts of yourself today.
I appreciate you. Guys, appreciate you.
Tiffany and Mandy, thank you so much.
All right, y'all, we will see you on Friday for Baqa.
Didn't I tell you what an awesome throwback? I just love taking a trip down memory lane.
Right, so make sure to check out Briana Bishin not once, not twice, but thrice a week. Oh no, those traits a Samana. Look at me, I'm bilingual. So anyway, yes, we will see you on Monday