Transcript of How Hala Taha Built Young and Profiting After Losing Everything

I'm Palestinian, and when I was 16 years old is when 9/11 happened. Suddenly, it's like in one day, it's like I was an outsider. I got rejected so much. Imagine, literally everything I wanted to try in high school, I was denied. I wasn't holla anymore. That gave me really thick skin where I didn't care. I tried for everything because I just figured, rejection is just part of the process, and I just got very used to it. Then when I got to college, there was Black students, Spanish students, and actually not many White students. And suddenly, I was equal again. So I'm grateful for those experiences, but that definitely was...

That is absolutely heartbreaking. The sheer thought of judging somebody because of where they look, being profiled. A whole community discounting, turning their back on you because of your ethnicity, because of what happened that you'd had nothing to do with, but you were paying the price. It's horrific. Yeah. What's up, guys? I got a good one for you today. I have Hala with us. She is an absolutely incredible entrepreneur. She has built an amazing media company, an amazing podcast called YAP, Young and Profitable, an amazing network she's built, and she is the epitome of determination. So Hala, welcome to the show.

Sean, I'm so pumped to be here. Thank you for having me.

No, Absolutely. It's so funny because the podcasting world is so large, but also so small, right? And so for years, I'd always see you come up on the little rankings right there with me. I was like, wow. And then when it came the opportunity to do a little show swap, I'm like, I already feel like I know this person. So big world, but small world at the same time. So it's just nice to actually finally get to connect with you.

I know. I see you around the charts, and it's cool to see your growth. I know I started a couple of years earlier than you, but I've seen you around, and just congratulations on all your success so far.

Well, thank you. Likewise to you. It's like one of those facial recognition things. You always see the people and you're like, Hey, you never know. One day, you might be on a cool conversation with them. And what I What I really love to do now is because we've shifted to society and culture, and we have different types of guests now that are in the public eye. And it's not always just podcasters like it used to be. So when I get the opportunity to talk to a colleague or someone that does the exact same thing as me on an amazing level. I get really excited about it because I always feel like I could learn something, too.

Yeah. Well, I'm an open buck. Anything you want to learn about podcasting or social media or creator entrepreneurship, I'd love to talk about it.

Well, I mean, the social media thing, that's always a hack for me. I need help in that. That's always something that's not my thing. I don't know how it really works, but I do my best. But I'm really wanting you to give the audience some background on your journey prior to podcasting and your journey into it and what it's done for you. So just give them the lay of the land a little bit. We'll go from there.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I think the best place to start is in college. In college, I had this dream of becoming a singer. I had always sang my whole life, and I was singing and songwriting, and I thought that I was going to be a pop singer, and that was really my goal. I had this crazy idea of interning at a radio station for the sole purpose of actually pushing my music to the DJs. I got an internship at Hot97, which is the world's number one hip hop and RnB station. This was 10 years ago in New York City, and I loved this internship. I started in the production department, more on the corporate side, and I did a really good job to the point where Angie Martinez, who was the voice of New York at the time, she's a huge radio personality, top of her field, was like, Holly, I want you to come work with me on the studio side. And only 13 people in the whole company were allowed to work on that side of the office. And it's where all the celebrities are. I was like, of course I want to. And so my internship actually formally ended at that point.

There was no more college credit associated with it. She was like, Well, you got to come in every day. I was like, Okay, after school, what do you mean? She was like, Well, it's up to you. If If you want to take this, you've got to come in every day. So I ended up quitting my job. My college career, I dropped out of school, and I decided to intern at this radio station. And so I worked for free at that radio station for two and a half years, and I took a pause from my college career. So then I had this new vision of what I could be. I didn't have to use my voice for singing. And I thought, hey, I could just be the next Angie Martinez. They're already priming me for this opportunity at the station. Now I know how to audio edit and do everything I need to do to actually become a radio personality. And that became my dream. But they weren't paying me any money. And I was the youngest of four siblings. All my siblings were in med school. And there was a certain point where I was like a failure, black sheep, college dropout, not even making any money.

I was making my money at night hosting showcases and parties with the DJs. And so my parents thought I was just like this wild party child and not happy with me at all. And I was like, okay, I got to get a paying job. And so the producer role opened up. The producer that worked on the show was a little bit of an underachiever. He got fired, and I was already doing his job. And I remember them telling me that they're hiring another producer. So I wrote this fancy email, why I deserve the job. I was already doing the job. I was like 22 years old or whatever I was. And they basically fired me after I asked to get that job. They actually wanted me to train somebody else who was in another department, a guy who was two years older than me, to train him how to be the producer because they had already fired the other guy. And then I didn't show up. Angie fired me, cut me off, and not only cut me off, but blackballed me from the industry. She told all my DJ friends that I had basically done everything for, that they can't even talk to me anymore.

And fired me and outcasted me from the industry. So I was really upset. I felt like somebody died. I felt like a part of my identity was stripped away from me. Everybody knew me as Hala from Hot 97. It felt really embarrassing that I had lost this job in this career. But I decided I was going to start something new. I got fired on a Thursday. By Sunday, I had this new idea that I was going to start something called The Sorority of Hip-hop, and I launched a blog site that ended up becoming really popular. I'll pause right there because I know I just spit out a lot. It's a long story, my journey, but I'll pause there.

No, it's really awesome. There's a lot there. There's a lot to dig into for the audience. But the first thing I want to dig into is dropping out of college. You are, like you said, the youngest of four siblings. Every other one of them were in medical school. That feeling and the being the black sheep, how did you deal with that? Because parental influence and family influence is a lot, Ala, right? At any point, did you feel that they were starting to talk you out of this? How did you deal with it?

Oh, yeah. I was really, really the black sheep of my family. So not only was all my three other siblings in med school, but my other immediate family were cousins that lived down the street, and all three them were also in med school. So I was the only one and not only taking an alternate path, but taking a very alternate path, not just going to business or something. And so I remember at Thanksgiving, I would It was just be talked down to. Everybody underestimated me, even though I was actually doing really cool stuff. I was building a blog site. I was running an events company. I was hacking social media and becoming an or on Twitter and things like that, but they couldn't see any of that. It wasn't credentialed. I wasn't making a lot of money yet. I really had nobody in my corner, literally nobody, except for my father. My father would always tell me, Oh, don't worry, you're a star. You're going to be their boss when you're older. My father always believed in me and helped me a lot. He would financially help me when I needed it in those moments in my life and was really the only one who believed in me.

I was like, No, just keep following your dreams as much as you can. And never talked down to me. But everybody else really looked down on me. I remember there was a period of time, so I started this blog site, and it became very popular. We were one of the most popular hip hop and entertainment sites in the world. There was a point in time where we got so big where MTV wanted us to have our own reality TV show. It was right after to the Jersey Shore. I was essentially finally had made it, six years into basically working my butt off, working for free since I was 18, 19 years old. And I was the lead of the show. They got us a studio on Broadway. They filmed us all summer, multiple episodes. And then they pulled the plug two weeks before the show was supposed to air. And it was another slap in the face. And at this point, I was like, okay, maybe everyone's right. Maybe I need to be normal, get a real job, go back to school. I remember all my siblings were doctors, and this is not in their residency.

I remember my brother and sister's seriously telling me, Basically, saying the highest level I could achieve was being a speech language pathologist or an occupational therapist. Not that those are bad things, but that's what they saw my potential as. I actually applied to 14 speech language pathology schools and got rejected from every single one of them. I went into business. I got my MBA, and one thing led to another. I started my podcast and started this media empire and way more successful. I love my siblings. They're very successful and smart, but way more successful than them. It just goes to show that you do not need to follow anyone's path. What we were talking about earlier on my podcast, never listen to people who not been where you want to go.

That's the thing, right? Because if you wanted to be a medical doctor, then you would have followed that path and you would have listened and you would have hung on to every single word, but not just because everybody in the family is doing one thing. Even your cousins down the street are into the medical practice, it doesn't mean that you have to follow that plan. What I found, the people that are most successful are the people that disrupt. You did this, started this in what, 2017, 2018, roughly?

My podcast itself? Yeah, 2018. Yeah.

Okay. That was still relatively early. You're an early adopter. You understood how these things work, and you probably saw this vision so clear. How did you explain to them at the time? Like, this is what I see, this is what I'm doing. And you're just going to, one day you'll see, and I'll look at you, right? How did you work through that?

I didn't. I just I did it myself. I didn't ask for anybody's permission. At the time when I started my podcast, I was in a corporate job for four years. I was crushing it, already making six figures. I had thought I would never, ever get back on a mic. But then it was 2018, I saw people like Jenna Kutcher and John Lee Dumas, who are both my clients now. I saw them just crushing it. I was like, Well, wait a second. I have radio experience. I can audio edit. I can video edit. I know how to hack social media. I'm a good personality. I can do this, too. And by the way, now it's so easy. When podcasting first came out, it was like you have to be really technical. It was really tricky to get your stuff on Apple. And suddenly there was these accessible platforms, like Podbean is where I started. And I was like, okay, well, I'll just upload my stuff to Podbean. My boyfriend was a music producer, and so I was like, I'll use one of his engineers to help me audio edit this because I also have a corporate job.

And so I started. I remember it was New Year's Day, and we were going around the room at my corporate job talking about our New Year's resolutions. I was like, I'm going to start a podcast this year. I said it out loud to the world, and I launched it later that year. It took me all the way till April, but I launched it, and I haven't missed an episode for almost eight years.

How was it... And great job. That's commendable, right? How was it the first time you said that out loud in front of your peers?

It was scary because everybody was like, Why are you doing this? I also started posting on LinkedIn at the time, and I remember a lot of my coworkers were like, What are you doing? Who do you think you are? Posting up content or trying to... What expertise do you have? Or why do you think you should be doing it? And also, I was around 30 I was 15 years old at the time when I launched my show, and I remember my friends telling me I was too old to launch my show. I was too old to do this. And that I had already tried and failed. So why are you trying again? You got rejected by radio, you got rejected by satellite radio. You got rejected by TV. You have a good job. Why are you doing this? You move past this. You matured from this dream, right? And so I just didn't listen to anyone. I I knew in my heart that I was a leader. I have always been somebody who just attracts big movements. So my first job, real corporate job, was 27 years old at Hewlett-Packard, and I started their young employee network, and I basically was running 7,000 young employees at the company.

I had kickstarted my Alumni Association at my college. And when I started the podcast, by episode 8, I had 20 volunteers in a Slack channel who worked for free for me and was a precursor of my social media agency now, Yatt Media. I just am very good at motivating and recruiting people to help me. I didn't need outside motivation. My motivation was motivating my fans and my team, and my motivation came from that.

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Until then, stay determined. We talked about this on your show, too, is being in an attitude of serving others. You started serving your audience, and that's what it took to grow and grow exponentially. A lot of times when we start something new, and I know this is true for me, I operated with a chip on my shoulder, and I kept hitting roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. It's like, Okay, fine. You're telling me I can't do something. You're just putting more fuel in the jet. That's all you're doing. But I realized I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. So I really love hearing you say you weren't doing it for anybody else. You weren't asking for permission. You didn't care. Your only goal was to pour into that audience.

And by the way, I literally, even two years into it, I thought you couldn't make money from podcasting. Now, my show has made $1. 4 million in sponsorship, just my show alone this year. That's amazing. And when I first started two years into it, I literally would tell people, Oh, you can't. This is just a passion project. This is just a hobby. You can't make money from podcasting. I truly believed that. I didn't even think it was possible to make money with your podcast because there wasn't a lot of examples. There wasn't people like you and me back then. It was like, there's only 10 people who make money off this, and for everybody else, it's a hobby is what I believed.

Well, that's what everybody thought I was doing, too. Why a job? You have a job. What's this hobby? What are you doing? This little podcast. How's your little podcast doing? And those things hurt, right? But then I have to sit there and look like, did they have a point then? Because when you said the first two years, you didn't know you could make money in podcasting. Hell, it took me three or four to realize that I could. And again, I didn't have the systems in place. I didn't have the right network. I didn't understand what I was doing. Now it's a little bit different.

But to have that faith in yourself and to continue to push when everybody's telling you can't do something, that's a special person.

Yeah. Well, you know what? It was being creative. So I thought that you couldn't make money via ads. I thought, like, sponsorship was only for Tim Farris and Jenna Kutcher and John Lee Dumas. And for all the other people, we had to get creative. And it did push me to get creative because that's how I came with my social media agency, where basically the people that would come on my show at the end of my show, and at the time I was working in corporate, I would take these interviews in lunch in a phone booth, like at Disney. I would do my interviews at lunch. And the guests that would come on my show, they'd end the interview and be like, Well, how did you become one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn? Can you do that for me? Or, How did you grow this podcast? I see you on the charts. Can you build me a podcast? And they were very successful people who had a lot of money who I was talking to. And for the longest time, I, again, told myself the story that there's no money in this. This is just a hobby.

And I've got my corporate career and just focus on your corporate career and do this to serve people. And COVID hit. And I found myself with so much more time, and I decided that I was going to start offering social media services. Do you know who Heather Monahan is?

Yes.

She was my first client, and she came on my podcast. She asked me those same questions, and she didn't leave me alone. I had really cool videos, and she would comment on my videos and be like, Holly, you have to teach me how to do videos. You have to do this for me. I wanted her to be my mentor. She was who I wanted to be in 10 years. I was like, Okay, Heather, I'll teach you how to do it on Saturdays. On Saturdays, we'll train you how to do these videos. I remember our first training session, it was like, I showed her Slack channel. I showed her our processes. And then she was like, Hala, I'm never going to do this. I'm going to hire you. You hate your job. You told me that they don't appreciate you. You already have a team. I just talked to Vanner Media. I could give them my money or I could give you my money. She's like, What are you going to do? I want to be your first client. Just say yes. And I was like, All right, I'll do it. So she paid me very little, like a thousand bucks a month.

I still work in my corporate job, but she was our first client. And then our second client was a billionaire there. Jason Waller, who paid us $30,000 a month to run his Instagram, LinkedIn, and podcast. And we grew his podcast huge. He became a really big podcaster. He quit podcasting since then because he had some legal issues. But Then it just skyrocketed. And I got one huge client after another. Before I knew it, I was making over six figures a month with my social media agency and still working a corporate job. Finally quit my corporate job six months into having my agency, I was making well over six figures a month and had 30 people all around the world employed at the company, YAP Media. That's the origin story of my social media and production agency.

Dude, that's badass. Yeah. That's really cool, right? I'm going to ask you a question because in this world, we talk to a lot of networks. We talk to a lot of social media agencies. What makes your network and what makes your social media agency so different?

Oh, I know the biggest differentiator is that I'm my own customer. So I am my own customer. The same team that launched, that built my LinkedIn, that built my Instagram, that built my podcast, that monetizes my podcast, are the managers of everybody else who do it for now my clients. And so even to this day, I am my own customer. So I have more urgency for things like growth. Nobody knows more about podcast growth and monetization than I do. Nobody, to be honest, I have a joke with one of my executives on my team that I probably make the most money per download of any podcaster in the world because nobody knows that I monetize better than I do. Just the fact that I want it for myself, and I'm creative for myself, and I innovate, and I'm my own guinea pig, I'm so much more innovative than all the other podcast networks. And I also have much more of a podcaster-first mentality, a listener-first mentality, while also wanting to monetize and grow and build my brand. So the fact that everything is basically centered around me, we're innovating and experimenting on my account, and then anything that works, we then just scale it as a service and launch it to our clients.

So I'll give you an example. I'm really big on the audio apps. I have probably 800,000 subscribers across all the different apps, do really well, that have done for many years. And now we're really focused on YouTube. Youtube is the future, right? One in four downloads happen on YouTube. Youtube is a social media platform. You can go viral on YouTube. And to me, that's the future, and I need to future proof everyone. I've been just trying my best to grow on YouTube. I figured out how to do in feed ads really well. I figured out thumbnails and titles and SEO and how to get organic as well as paid traffic to your YouTube. I'm just going to scale it out to all the big Ogie audio podcasters in my network, like Jenna Kutcher and John Lee Dumas and Laurie Harder and so on, so that they can just leverage everything that I spent money on and invested in to learn. And now they're just getting it as being as a part of my network. So me also being my own client helps me retain my clients because I'm just always ahead of the curve and make sure that we're all ahead of the curve.

Yeah, I think that's important because from what I've seen out there in the social media world, everybody thinks it's about, and again, it is about views, it's about engagement, but it's gone about in such a weird and basic way where you could just tell this isn't the right way to go. You know what I mean? How did you... Because Because you've mentioned this a couple of times, right? I don't want you to give your secrets on air, but share to me, you said hack social media three different times in our multiple conversations today. Is there any definition you can give me to that without giving away your stuff for free?

I don't mind giving away my stuff for free. I teach all of this stuff. I'm very transparent. When I say hack social media, what I really mean is just understanding your growth levers and the algorithms. Hacking social media is just understanding the algorithms. So on LinkedIn has a different algorithm than Instagram. But right now, everything is the TikTok-fication of social media, which is what Gary Vee taught me about. So in the past, old-school LinkedIn, old-school Facebook, they're the friend graph model. And basically in the past, your distribution on social media depended on how many followers and subscribers that you have. And it was just like you posted something up. If you had a lot of followers, you got more visibility, you got more engagement, you ended up going viral and so on. Now it's the interest-based model, where basically, even if you have zero followers, it's all dependent on how good your content is, how easily the algorithm can find you based on the keywords that you put in your posts and the repetitiveness of your posts so they know who to send your content to, the engagement and the engagement that you get. And so somebody with zero followers can go viral.

And I've seen this firsthand. So I have my Instagram profile, which I have not spent a lot of time growing my Instagram. My Instagram is something I've only focused on in the last two years. I solely focused on LinkedIn and podcasting for a very long time. And now I'm really focused on Instagram and YouTube as my next things that I'm going to try to really, really grow. And I started this other channel on the side that is... I'm Palestinian, and so I started a channel that is called Four Piece Media. And I launched a little volunteer team to create content that I felt really passionate about that didn't fit my business brand. And so I wanted to post it there. That content went so viral, so fast with no followers because it was the topic. People are passionate about the topic. So I could try so hard on Instagram to talk about entrepreneurship and business or whatever. And it's great. But people aren't going to fight for that topic and really want to contribute and talk about it. And so in this social media world right now, it's to me, the secret is, what is that passionate topic that you're going to talk about?

And you also have to be realistic There's topics that you can own, and there's a cap to how many people are going to interact with it. So if your content is about cat lovers or whatever, there's a lot of cat lovers out there, you're going to get a decent amount of views if you can trigger people's emotions to why they feel so passionate about cats. And so for me, I think a lot of hacking the algorithms these days is understanding the power of the topics and the emotions that you can bring with those topics is how you actually get visibility. And if you have good engaging content and so on, and train the algorithm on what you speak on, you'll do well.

That's interesting, right? Because the A word, algorithm, that has creators spiraling, right? And to a point where they'll chastise Instagram for not showing their content. And then I look at my certain situation. We've grown, but at the same time, you would think that having a good guest on, a big name, a recognizable face, would do a lot more than it actually does. And it doesn't do much on Instagram. It really doesn't. So it's like, I feel like I'm constantly fighting, scratching and claw for every single view. And we'll have some that go to 450,000 views. We'll have some that go 250, 197. But I still feel, and I'm like you, I'm an open book. I will say this, so I'm blue in the face, and I'll tell everybody how I feel about my platform. I feel at times, because of the types of conversations we have, it could be very vanilla at times. It could be very inspirational and Helping people get over their fears and how to be better and more disciplined in their life. But that's not necessarily what everybody's looking for right now. But there's creators like myself that say, wait a second, I'm not going to change who I am based on the algorithm, right?

So what would you give a creator like myself or somebody like me the advice of what can they do to broaden the horizon, stay on brand, and to understand the algorithm a little more to catch it and ride that tailwind?

Yeah. So I think aside from the topic, which is basically you're saying, there are certain topics that just do really well on Instagram and social media, working out, doing your makeup, fashion, because people are really passionate about these topics, and also people like to be entertained, right? And so when it comes to our type of educational entrepreneurship, pretty serious content, it's really difficult to get that engagement and get people to follow us, right? And that's why there's some things you need to think about. First of all, are you on the right platform? Because, for example, LinkedIn loves this type of content. I'm one of the biggest influencers on LinkedIn. I get so much more engagement on LinkedIn than I do on Instagram, right? So are you on the right platforms? Long-form platforms like YouTube do really well with this stuff, audio podcast, which you're crushing it, right? Linkedin. But Instagram, we still want to grow on Instagram. We still want to go viral. The other thing you need to think about is what features are working right now. So every platform has different features that are working. On LinkedIn, vertical photographs and really keyword-heavy meaningful posts do really well, okay?

Videos don't yet. They keep trying to push video. Videos don't really work on LinkedIn yet. On Instagram, It's reels. It's short form video that is getting all the views. It's carousels that are doing really well. And those are the two content pieces that by far are doing the best, right? And then every social media platform has the same rules. So number one, it's like engagement. So for example, watch time is super important. That cuts across YouTube, that cuts across Instagram, that cuts across TikTok, that cuts across LinkedIn video. When it comes to videos, the algorithm wants to know, are people watching it for how long? Are they watching it multiple times? Then are they engaging? Are they liking, commenting, and sharing? And all these little engagements are weighted differently. That's what people don't realize. So likes and comments are the lowest... Likes Liking is the least desirable viral action. And a lot of people measure their success based on the number of likes. Comments are better. Longer comments are better. Comment conversations are even better. Shares are by far across all the platforms, the number one thing that will help you go viral and get you impressions.

So you always want to optimize for shares. So that means you need to have shareable content. So a lot of people's content is about me, me, me. And Nobody wants to share that. Nobody wants to share some random conversation about business, usually, to their followers. They might like it themselves and want to hear it, but it's not important enough for them to actually want to share, which is why it's really difficult for this type of entrepreneurship content to actually go super viral. But of course, if it's really great, people are going to share it. So it's like, how do you make your content even better? Another thing is like, thumbnails. So this is really important for basically all the video platforms, even short form content like Instagram and LinkedIn. Your thumbnail is really important. People want to know what are they going to stay and watch for? They want to know what the video is about, and you want your thumbnail to look really engaging and welcoming for people to want to actually click and watch. And your thumbnail essentially is what is going to optimize your click-through rate and how engaging your video is what's going to optimize your watch time.

And clicks plus watch time is retention and growth, right? So it's like you want to get people to click on the video. You want to get people to watch it and watch it multiple times and engage. And the best engagement metric, like I mentioned, is a share. That just cuts across all the social media platforms in terms of how to do well.

No, it's awesome because for a creator like myself, I'm good at actually doing the content. We are going to have a conversation, and it's really hard for someone like me or other creators to think of the ideas of what's going to actually work. What keywords do I need in my LinkedIn post? What keywords do I need in my Instagram? Caption or Facebook, it doesn't matter. The SEO on YouTube, the titles, the thumbnails. Now, your agency, I would imagine you guys do that research and you help your clients through that. It's like, Hey, here's this post, here's Here's this caption, here's this thumbnail. Is that how it works?

Yeah. So basically, on their behalf, we're going through their content. We're picking the best content that we think as a chance. We're creating the thumbnail with the short headline and really engaging facial expressions so that people will actually click on it. And the other thing we're doing is thinking outside the box, right? So everybody is so focused on these talking head reels. But for instance, on Instagram now, this comic book style graphic posts where it's like, let's say, me and Grant Cardone, and it's me on top as a graphic and then us both on the bottom. And it's me asking a question, then it flips to him, just a static graphic with him answering the question. And people like to engage with that more. They want to read your podcast, surprisingly, right? Interesting. And so it's also like thinking outside the box and not just doing the same thing that everybody else is doing. That's really how you cut through the noise. It's like being one step ahead of everybody else. Now, also on Instagram, they just rolled out that you can have different sizing, right? And so we're seeing that less tall, vertical stuff is performing better because it just stands out.

People are like, Well, what is this? This looks different than everything else I'm scrolling by. So you want to stop the scroll. And sometimes that means breaking whatever everybody thought is best practice, which is talking head reels. Let's stop doing that and try other things that might stop the scroll and get engagement.

Well, see, because the talking head videos is very hard for creators because you have to think of the idea, you have to get the script, you have to talk into your camera. And I don't do any camera-facing things anymore. It's all here. It's all here because none of that was flowing for me. So I can imagine the value of creating other types of content to bring people to you. And then if they like you, they stay. Then they listen to your talking head stuff. They listen to your show. They go to the other places that you are because they end up liking you and want to support you. But it's very hard for a creator. From my seat, because I only know how to do what I know how to do. I don't claim to know how to hack social media or to create the best graphic or to create the best type of content to go along with what I'm saying. I just don't know how to do that. So I would imagine a lot of creators the same way.

Yeah, it's really hard, especially when you're an entrepreneur and you're not just a full-time influencer. I really want to get super, super good and lean into video this year. I'll just be honest, me and Cody Sanchez. Cody Sanchez is huge now. Last year, we were at the same level, and she just leaned into video, and now she blew up. She's my friend, right? And I'm so proud of her. But she leaned into short form video, and she's like, light ears ahead. I do well, and I've got a business and everything, but she's crushed on Instagram, crushed on YouTube.

Cody's great.

Cody's awesome. She's doing amazing, right? And we were at the same place a year ago in terms of influence. You know what I'm saying? But it's because she went full steam ahead and dedicated the time to create video content that is engaging, that is not podcast clips of her podcast, and very intentional. She's doing fashion reels. She's going to car washes and doing fun little videos. She really leaned into it and invested the time. And that is what you need to do as a creator if you want to stand out. You really need to invest the time, and you can't do the cookie cutter things. But not everybody wants to be as big as Cody Sanchez, and a lot of folks don't have a lot of time. So one of the things that I found One of the things that I love to do is I do a lot of webinars. So with my podcast network, I have a podcast network now. One of the things that we're known for is pioneering 360 campaigns, and something that I do as a creator, as part of my creative campaign options, is I do webinars where teachable will sponsor me or OpusClip or Pipedrive.

And for example, for a Pipedrive webinar, I do a 45 minutes sales training. It might include a five minute demo of Pipedrive, and then Pipedrive pays me. And now I record them in this beautiful studio, and I'm really passionate because it's me teaching sales material and things that I love, and it doesn't feel scripted and it doesn't feel fake. And then we chop that up and use that for social media content, and it performs way better than any talking head video would from a podcast, right? So we've tried to figure out ways in which we can just incorporate my day-to-day process, like me doing a webinar, to then create really great content out of it. And then I'm not going to take it to the next level, I've got to be intentional. I know you always talk about intention. I've got to be really intentional and create that content.

Absolutely. Let's shift gears. Thank you for all that because I want the audience to get to know you much, much more and dive more into your story on how you've overcome, because to me, you've overcome a lot. It couldn't have been all sunshine and rainbows. Other than your family being in medical school and people telling you you're too old and you can't do it. Who do you think you are? You got blackballed out of an industry that you loved. You thought that was your path. What other hard moments of adversity did you have? Did you have to overcome in order to build what you built? Like you said, you've done over $1. 4 million just in your own show this year. That shit ain't easy.

Yeah. There's a couple of pivotal moments in my life that I think I had to overcome. Number one, I'm Palestinian and grew up in my teenage years. When I was 16 years old is when 9/11 happened. That was really tough. I remember just our family was treated so much differently in that moment. We grew up in a very white town. My dad was a surgeon and very successful. And we were treated like all the Italian kids, all the Portuguese kids. We were treated like an immigrant family, but everybody was... I was popular. I had friends that would sleep over, and everything was normal. My brother was captain of the football team, and we were loved. And then suddenly, it's like in one day, it's like I was an outsider. And people would scream at me in the hallways, and I wasn't invited to the parties, and I wasn't getting on the cheerleading team, and I wasn't in the plays anymore, and I wasn't allowed in the talent show. And it was like one thing after the other. And I really feel like those three years in high school were not that they were horrible, but it's like I wasn't living...

I wasn't holla anymore. And I was just this very bubbly person who was always lead of the plays. And then suddenly, it was like all these opportunities were stripped away from me. But I hate looking at things in a victim mindset. For me, it's like I'm so grateful that happened to me because then when I got to college, I ended up getting into a regular school because I had no extracurricular activities because I literally was not basically allowed to participate in anything in high school. I got into a school that was really diverse in Newark, New Jersey, called NGIT. When I got there, there was Black students, Spanish students, Indian Arab students, and actually not many White students. And suddenly, I was equal again. And I was getting all the opportunities. And so I became very ambitious and popular. And I also didn't fear rejection anymore because I got rejected so much. Imagine, literally everything I wanted to try in high school, I was denied. So I was just so used to rejection. And that gave really thick skin where I didn't care. I tried for everything because I just figured, rejection is just part of the process, and I just got very used to it.

So I think it gave me an edge, which is why when I was 19, I was already working at a station hanging out with celebrities and doing really cool stuff when everybody else was doing their regular college thing. So I'm grateful for those experiences, but that definitely was a big thing I had to overcome, and I feel bad for all the Arabs and folks that really got mistreated for no reason, especially from a family like mine. My dad loved being American. My dad used to tell me all the time, We live in the best country in the world. You should be so grateful you're in America. He really was the embodiment of the American dream. So such a slap in the face to a family like mine.

That is absolutely heartbreaking.

Yeah.

Thank you for sharing that. That can't be easy to talk about. I mean, this year's thought of judging somebody because of where they look, being profiled, that's mortifying to me. I can't stand it. And the fact that you had to go through it and you've come out on the other side with such gratitude. I mean, truly, those were hard moments, right? That's what this show is based on. The Determined Society is going through hard moments. Sometimes it's maybe a family member leaves you, a family member passes away, but you dealt with A whole community discounting, turning their back on you because of your ethnicity, because of what happened that you'd had nothing to do with, but you were paying the price. You were paying the price, and you built thick skin through all of that. You were used to the rejection. There's no question in my mind, it is the reason why you're such a damn badass now. So there was a gift from it. It doesn't take away from the fact that that's just It's horrific. But I mean, you ever look back and wonder, if that hadn't happened, would I be where I am now?

Yeah, I do because I feel like everything is like the butterfly effect, right? Like little things in your life position you differently later on. And yeah, I do feel like if that didn't happen to me, I don't know if I would have been so ambitious. And to be honest, me in college, I just wanted to try things. I actually I never went to class because I got to the radio club, and I got to my sorority, and I was on the cheerleading team, and I was the lead in my play. I just wanted to try and try and try things because I was denied for so long to do anything outside of just class. And so I wanted all these experiences, and I think it was me thinking outside the box and being more excited, not about my education, unfortunately or fortunately, not about me in class, I was more excited about doing other things, like being in the radio club. It just gave me a different perspective, I think, on how I wanted to spend my time.

That's so cool. What would you tell somebody listening right now that is going through something maybe not exactly similar, but there's a lot going on in the world right now. There's a lot, and it's a disgusting place at times to live in. We have to hold on to the beautiful parts because I truly do believe that this is still a great country. There's still a a lot of beautiful things going on. We just have to focus on those. But what would you tell a young hauler right now or a young boy that's being persecuted because of the way they look, maybe not be their skin, maybe it's a personality thing that nobody likes, How would you help them? What would you say to them to get through that?

That's a good question. I think number one, I think it's important to ensure that you do not allow other people's beliefs to infiltrate you. I always knew, and it could be that you have nobody in your life that is giving you these good beliefs. So it's up to you to try to make sure that you know that you're a person who is capable, that you can accomplish your dreams. Whatever your goals are, you want to make sure that you truly believe that you're that type of person. And for me, that was using affirmations, where I literally would, I remember being 18 years in college and writing down everything I wanted to feel. I'm confident, I am beautiful, I am outgoing, I am social, everybody likes to be around me, whatever it is, writing it down. And then I would record it and listen to it all the time, right? Until I really felt that way, and I showed up with confidence, and I showed up differently, you know? And so I think almost tricking yourself to believe until you become, right? I believe that that is really important. So having really great self-belief, even if nobody else believes in you and everybody else is doubting you, you've got to believe in yourself, and no one's going to do that for you.

You've got to do that for yourself. I think that's really important.

No, thank you for that. There's something in there that I feel is the key, that I feel without a shadow of doubt, from an objective standpoint, that was the reason it happened. What do you think the key was? I'm interested on your perspective because a lot of people do affirmations, to be quite honest. They do them. They're not as effective for everybody else as they were you. Why do you think yours works so much?

I think it's because I paired it with really taking a lot of action and obsession, pure obsession. Let's talk about my podcast and what it took for me to launch my podcast. I was working a corporate job. I remember I would stay up till midnight prepping, doing whatever I need. And at the same time, I was growing my LinkedIn profile. So the two things I had going on was my corporate job, and I was a LinkedIn influencer, and I had a podcast. Before where nobody was a LinkedIn influencer or had a podcast. And so I remember I would stay up till a minute. I had a Slack channel with eight volunteers or something, and it grew over time. And I would get all my stuff prepped for the day in terms of what am I posting on LinkedIn? What am I posting for my podcast? If I have prep, whatever, research. I remember I would study 20 hours a week for my interviews. I was insane. And I would read every single book and listen to every single interview. And I had really great guests from the start because I stood out as somebody who really tried hard, right?

And then I would wake up at 6: 00 in the morning and do whatever I needed to do or even earlier than that and be at work by 9: 00 and basically work for my podcast before I even got to work. And then I do my posts on the train, and then I do my interviews at lunch. And I was just working around the clock through the weekends and just busting my ass and not only trying to figure out how to be the best host, but everything else. How to market, how to monetize, how do other people monetize, how do other people grow, what are the experiments I can do? And I got really obsessed with it to the point where two years into my podcasting journey, they called me the podcast princess.

I I did read that somewhere. Yeah, I did read it somewhere. All those things that you're talking about are very important. I think they're very pivotal, obviously. It's like when we talked on your show, it was your process. It was your strategic activity. You were clear on what you needed to do, and you continued to do it over and over and over again, no matter if you were tired, no matter how you felt emotionally. But are you interested in to hear what I feel it was the main key in your affirmations?

Sure.

Most people will write down affirmations. They'll journal it, or they'll hear something. They'll hear a motivational podcast that's full of affirmations. But what you did differently was you recorded your voice saying it to you. To me, that's the key, because people can tell you anything they want. They can tell you how they see you. They can tell you how powerful, how beautiful, how smart, how successful. But if you don't believe it yourself and you don't hear it in your own voice, it's not going to work as effectively. I just thought that was interesting because most people say, Yeah, I do affirmations in the mirror. When people do affirmations in the mirror on the ones that they feel most conflicted on, their voice cracks. It gets lower. They're not as powerful with it, so you don't emotionally feel it. But hearing it over and over again, to me, that was a pretty nice touch. I like that.

Yeah. It reminds me of what you told me about how you wake up to an alarm that says, I love you, and it's you saying that, right?

No, I just wrote it down. I named it as, I love you, Sean. You wrote it down? No, it's on the iPhone, I love you, Sean. It used to say things like, get up, bitch. No one gives a shit, work harder. And then I realized that was all me operating out of scarcity. I'm not enough. So let me start programming myself to read something positive right away. I love you, Sean. And now everything I do in the morning and throughout the day, I'm operating out of love for myself. That's a completely different thing for me now. I just thought that was a really cool point to pull out that it was in your voice. I think that was a pivotal move right there. It was a pivotal move. It was a pivotal move. Very strategic. I liked it. I like it. Hopefully, the audience, guys, if you're listening, hopefully, if you're having an issue believing that you are what you think you are, record it and listen to yourself. I mean, truly, you're never too far ahead to do that. When you were talking about them, I'm like, Man, maybe I should try that. That's pretty damn cool.

As we start to wind down, we're coming towards the end of the show, and I always like to ask one specific question on my show. This is the Determined Society, and you have given a very good picture of who you are as a face of determination, but how do you truly define what determination means to you?

To me, determination just means showing up every day. And doing your best job.

Do you believe every day you have to be as good as you were yesterday or it doesn't count?

No. I believe that some days you show up 50%, some days you show up 300%. I just think You've got to just keep trying and keep putting in the reps. Also, respect yourself enough to do what you say you're going to do. To do what you say you're going to do and to hold yourself accountable even when nobody else is holding you accountable and to have that accountability.

You're speaking my language, Ala. You're speaking my language. I love that shit. Well, no, because it's important, right? Because the reason why I asked Do you feel like you need to be as good as you were yesterday? Because a lot of people will feel if they don't perform or they don't give the exact amount 100% that they gave the day before, that the day is a failure. And it's not. You're 100%, sometimes you're 50% that day. But you just can't have a zero day.

You can't judge yourself.

You just got to keep going. In closing, where can people find you? How can they work with you? I definitely want you to plug that. Tell the audience.

If you guys want to listen to another awesome podcast, I've got Young and Profiting. It's on all apps. It's on YouTube. Yap is what a lot of people call it. If you guys are interested in social media or podcast services, you can go to yapmedia. Com. If you're another podcaster who wants to monetize, you can check out our YAP Media podcast network.

Love it. Thank you so much for coming on, Hala. It was a great pleasure to connect with you. I feel like we've been a part of each other's lives all afternoon. It's been great. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to speaking to you further.

Likewise, Sean. Thank you.

Absolutely. For the audience, share this episode with someone you know, love, and trust that can learn from Paula, and then also just learn a story of determination. She went through a lot, and she overcame it, and she's a very successful individual because of it. Until next time, guys. Stay determined.