Hala Taha: Turn LinkedIn Engagement Into Paying Clients | Marketing

Hala Taha (0:00)

Today's episode is sponsored in part by HeyGen, Shopify, Life at the Speed of Play and Indeed. HeyGen helps you create AI avatar videos without constantly being behind the camera. Get your first three videos free at heygen.com/profiting. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/profiting.

Life at the Speed of Play by Mark Pincus helps entrepreneurs quickly test ideas and find the ones worth pursuing. Get two books for the price of one at getmarksbook.com/yap.

Indeed helps you attract, interview, and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at indeed.com/podcast.

As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.

Hey, Young and Profiters. Most entrepreneurs are sleeping on one of the best platforms to grow their business. Now, I'm not talking about Instagram, and I'm not talking about TikTok. I'm talking LinkedIn. I've spent years growing my brand on LinkedIn, and it's become such a big part of my business that now, I teach all these strategies inside my LinkedIn Creator Club on school. You can check it out at yapmedia.com/school, that's S-K-O-O-L. You can also find that link in our show notes. Now, this conversation I had with my friend Jenna Kutcher on her Goal Digger Podcast is where I break down how I actually make LinkedIn work for your business. We're talking about creating content that gets noticed, building genuine connections, and turning your audience into business opportunities without ever sounding salesy. Now, there are some super actionable tips in this one, so grab your notebook and enjoy. If you want to learn more about LinkedIn Creator Club on School, go to yapmedia.com/school.

Jenna Kutcher (1:53)

Well, this feels like an absolute delight. I am so excited to finally connect with you. One thing that I love is when I see other women at the top of the charts. I have been cheering you on, and so welcome to the show, Hala.

Hala Taha (2:06)

Oh, thank you so much, Jenna. I'm so excited for this conversation.

Jenna Kutcher (2:10)

So I know a little bit about your story, but for those who might not know, can you tell me a little bit about your career journey that's led you to where you are today and where you are today? Because all of this is so fascinating.

Hala Taha (2:22)

Sure. So I'll start with where I am today, and then maybe I'll work backwards, and you can feel free to pause and interject whenever you'd like. So they call me the Podcast Princess. I'm the CEO and founder of YAP Media. It's an award-winning social media agency, and I'm also running the number one business and self-improvement podcast network, where I grow and monetize shows. I'm the host of Young and Profiting, which is a top 10 business podcast, top five entrepreneurship podcast on Apple, and across all the different apps. So I love my job. I basically created my dream job, and it wasn't an overnight success. I started my career in radio about 10 years ago. And when I was a junior in college, I interned for the Angie Martinez Show on Hot 97, which was the number one hip hop and R&B station. And I basically interned for three years at the radio station to understand how production works, radio works. At the same time, I had online radio shows, which was the precursor of podcasts. Podcasts were technically available, but they were really complicated, and a lot of people were doing online radio shows. So I'd host music-based entertainment shows with the up-and-coming DJs at Hot 97 on the side. And I used to make my money selling hip hop showcases and hosting parties that night with all the DJs. And so I did that for three years, actually ended up dropping out of school because they wanted me to keep working more and more at the station. And I started doing commercials at the station and working on the weekends for them and learning the Dilep boards and running the whole music program and everything like that.

And so I eventually wanted to get paid.

I come from a family of doctors, Arabic American and education is a big deal. So I was a black sheep of my family at this point. So they basically pushed me to ask to get paid at least since I dropped out of school. And that rubbed Hot 97 a bit the wrong way. Long story short, I got fired.

And I felt like my whole identity was taken away from me. I felt like I was hanging out with celebrities. I was dating Chris Brown at one point. Like I was, it was like my whole identity was crushed and everybody basically blackballed me from Hot 97 because once you're sort of out, you're out. And some people were like, lay low, maybe Angie will forgive you.