Hala Taha: How to Turn Social Media Visibility Into a Revenue Engine | Marketing

Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha: Entrepreneurship and Self-Improvement Podcast

In this crossover episode, Hala Taha details her journey from early LinkedIn experimentation to building Yap Media into a multimillion-dollar media company. She breaks

Key takeaways

• Hala Taha grew Young and Profiting from scratch using LinkedIn audience swaps and volunteer teams before monetizing her expertise into a multimillion-dollar media company.
• She advocates for 'engagement pods' on LinkedIn, arguing that real human interaction in the first 90 minutes boosts algorithmic reach without violating terms of service.

Main topics

• Personal brand origin stories and consistency
• Leveraging engagement pods and platform trades for growth

Notable quotes

You cannot scale to the elite level where like you are a household name... without a team.

Conclusion

The episode delivers actionable blueprints for transforming social vis

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) It's probably the best decision I ever made in my life was to really just get started on LinkedIn. Definitely the most thing that I'm like, wow, I'm so thankful that I did that when everybody kind of rolled their eyes at me and that I just showed up every day and built it brick by brick. You cannot Speaker 2 (0:15) scale to the elite level where like you are a household name, people know you, you're getting paid six figures to speak. Like you cannot scale to that without a team. Speaker 1 (0:23) Your brand enables you to get paid more. I was able to charge like the upper, upper limit of what somebody would pay for their social and podcast because I had the social proof. I'm really scared for young people in terms of like their inability to actually acquire skills. If you can acquire your skills online, I feel like that is the way to future-proof yourself. What's up, Yap Fam? A little while ago, I joined Courtney Johnson as a guest on her show, Built in Public Podcast. And we had such an incredible conversation that I knew I had to share it right here on our feed. Usually, I'm the one in the host seat grilling entrepreneurs about how they built their businesses. But this time around, Courtney flipped the script on me, and we talked about how I grew my personal brand and built Yap Media from the ground up. Now, I had an absolute blast recording with Courtney. She's one of my friends in Austin, one of my new friends. And this convo gives a really cool behind-the-scenes look into my own story that I don't always get to share. I don't always feel comfortable to share. So you guys are going to like it. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this special crossover episode with Courtney Johnson. Speaker 2 (1:28) Welcome to Built in Public. I am your host, Courtney Johnson. I've been a full-time content creator and a personal brand strategist for seven years, and I really built my career sharing the process, not just the outcomes of personal brand. Built Speaker 1 (1:40) in Public is about what it actually looks Speaker 2 (1:42) like to build a brand, a business, and to build real leverage in the creator economy. We're talking strategy, systems, audience growth, monetization, and that uncomfortable middle ground between I have an idea and this is actually working. I'll be sharing what I'm testing, what's working, what's not, and I'm gonna be bringing on people who are building their careers and companies out loud too. If you want honest conversations, practical insight, and zero BS, you are in the right place. Let's build in public. Today, I'm sitting down with Hala Taha. Hala built one of the biggest podcasts in the entire world. It's called Young and Profiting. She built it completely from scratch without industry backing and turned it into a major, major, multimillion dollar media company. Hala is a founder of Yap Media. a LinkedIn top voice, and she's someone who has built her brand by consistently showing up, taking up space, and owning her voice in rooms where she wasn't always expected. Paula has grown an audience of millions, interviewed some of the biggest names in business, but what's most interesting is how intentionally she's built both influence and infrastructure at the same time. So today we're talking about what it looks like to actually build authority, to scale your platform, and to create opportunities instead of waiting for them. Speaker 1 (2:55) Hey, Hola. Hey, Courtney. Welcome to the pod. I'm happy you're here. I'm happy to be here, too. We just had a great conversation. We're doing a little, like, swap cast Speaker 2 (3:04) situation today. Speaker 1 (3:06) We're here Speaker 2 (3:06) all day together. We're here all day. We're spending the day at the studio. And I want to start with talking about personal brand. What is your personal Speaker 1 (3:13) brand Speaker 2 (3:14) origin story? Like, how did you start? Speaker 1 (3:17) Well, I feel like I've been trying to make it online since I was... Literally like 18. Like I was so early to the game. How did you know? Like how did you know that this was a thing? Well, I started my career in radio and I worked at Hot 97. I was Angie Martinez's assistant for like three years who was like the voice of New York at the time. This is like over 10 years ago. And I was really interested in radio and I was really interested in this like new like influencer world. But at that time, there was no word called influencer. You know, nobody was really like famous online yet. And I was kind of like really early to it. So I actually started a blog when I was like 24 or something called the sorority of hip hop after my radio days. And I had this these like online radio shows before podcasts were even a thing. Speaker 2 (4:11) And so Speaker 1 (4:11) like I started out like super young just trying to make it online and I was kind of like too early. Like my biggest platform was like Twitter and I had like 6,000 followers. But like that was a lot back then, you know. I had a YouTube channel that had a couple thousand subscribers and like that was super cool back then because nobody, like there was no concept of like an influencer with millions of followers. So I just really wanted to be visible online and try to like experiment with the internet. So I was starting early on. The first like big break I had, I think, was LinkedIn. So in 2018, when I started my first like real podcast, like Young and Profiting, that's like a top 100 podcast today. I started in 2018 and I started posting about my journey of becoming a podcaster and interviewing all these cool people on LinkedIn. And that's when I first like really started establishing a brand where people knew me and I had some sort of influence. audience. Speaker 2 (5:06) Yeah. So you, yeah, a lot of our listeners are like kind of in that cringe phase and still feeling cringe of posting or maybe around a certain topic. Speaker 1 (5:15) Did you have that when you were starting? I didn't have to have any reservations about what people thought about me because I was so used to putting myself online and so used to kind of peers or family looking down upon that or thinking that, you know, I was like the black sheep or that it was cringeworthy. So I just like had the confidence to start posting online and didn't really feel like it was wrong to post online or that I would get in trouble to post online. I knew that that was something that I really wanted and wanted to figure out. So I didn't have a lot of like cringiness related to posting online. Speaker 2 (5:53) Yeah, your consistency is really impressive. I mean, you've been online for like 10 plus years, consistently, consistently posting. How did you maintain that consistency? I mean, that's really impressive. Speaker 1 (6:05) I have to say I didn't do it alone. I'm somebody who always recruits a team. When I first started my podcast, two months into it, I had 10 volunteers in a Slack channel. Well. I don't even like, you know, I have a 10 % team that runs my social media now. And, you know, you need arms and legs as you grow a brand, as you grow a business. You can't. think that you're going to keep doing the same things you were doing 10 years ago and that you can, you know, post every post yourself. At some point, you need to scale with systems and a team, right? So I've always been of this mentality of like having people support me. And I've never been shy to ask for help, even if they were interns or volunteers, especially when I wasn't making any money. I would literally put out posts like, hey, if you want to learn how to post on social media, you know, come join my movement for Young and Profiting podcast. And I would just train people how to support me in my DMs, how to support me with my website, how to support me editing videos and posting online. And I basically would just recruit teams to help me until I actually had a business where I started paying people to help me post online and become more visible. So I'm not really afraid of asking for support. And I think that was a big help. Speaker 2 (7:19) Yeah, I think interns is interesting, too. Like a lot of people have to take an internship to finish a certain course or like a completion or learn a certain skill and that can be a huge win-win I love that I love what you're positioning it as because it is a win-win it's like you're training like you're going out of your way to give this person training that they would have otherwise pay a mentor for or pay like a course for that you're giving for free in exchange they're helping you with with content that's a great place to start yeah Speaker 1 (7:47) so whenever I had any sort of like free labor. Like a lot of people will give me crap about this. Like I'll say in an interview, like I had free interns work for me for two years and people will be like, how dare you? How dare you exploit people? When literally if you talk to those people, they'll be like, Hala taught me everything. If it wasn't for Hala, like, you know, I was able to get X career. Some of these people have equity in my business now and are leaders and business partners with me, you know, eight years later. Right. So there's so much opportunity in taking an internship. I myself interned for free at Hala. for three years under Angie Martinez and learned so much. I'm literally making millions off the skills that I learned from Angie Martinez now. Speaker 2 (8:26) And Speaker 1 (8:26) so I really am a believer of doing free work if you are learning something in exchange. And when it came to these interns, you know, as soon as I learned something really... like valuable and they were really good at it, I wouldn't have them keep doing the same thing. That's exploiting their labor. I would say, okay, now train that to the next person and let me teach you something new. Speaker 2 (8:47) And Speaker 1 (8:48) as long as you're able to keep teaching them, I feel like then it's like a win-win situation. As soon as you're not teaching them anymore and just getting work from them. then you've Speaker 2 (8:56) got to Speaker 1 (8:56) pay him. Yeah. This is like the perfect level of spicy Speaker 2 (8:59) topic I love to talk about here. Yeah. I remember when I was in college, Gary Vee had this video that I saw and it was tips for college students. So I was watching this YouTube video. I'm like, who's this Gary Vee guy? And one of his tips for college students was like, don't be afraid to take on free work. Like go seek out free work from people you admire. And at the time I was like, that's such bullshit. I am paying. for all this shit, I'm going into debt. Like, why would I take on free work? Fuck you, Gary V. I was like, I hate this dude. Yeah. Then I got an opportunity to work for, to take on a couple of projects for free. And I was like, okay, I'm going to do them. Oh my God, I learned way more than I would have. Yeah. Even in a class. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry, Gary V. So if I ever meet him, I'm going to tell him that story. And you've got to start Speaker 1 (9:46) somewhere, right? Yeah. If you're, if I'm looking for somebody that I'm going to pay to do something, I want you to already have the skills. Right. I want you to, you know, do a better job than I could do myself. Yeah. But if I hire somebody for free or if I have somebody for free working or for a stipend, you know, now. I have a company and we give out stipends to interns, you know, so we're still we're paying them, but just not as much as a full time role. It's like I'm going to have more leeway. I'm going to take my time with you and give you like that attention and in return not have to pay as much as a regular employee because you don't have the skills that warrants compensation for a regular employee. Speaker 2 (10:22) Another way when you're starting out, you can. reduce your labor costs is doing trades. Like I used to help people, like I would run someone's social media for like a month in exchange they would build my website. I would, you know, give someone a social media audit. They would give me a like tax or shipping audit or something. So I'm curious, did you facilitate any of those trades early on? Speaker 1 (10:43) I Speaker 2 (10:43) loved trading, Speaker 1 (10:44) but I would trade to actually grow my audience. So I would trade audiences. So my first point of leverage was LinkedIn. So I remember when I first started posting on LinkedIn, I have like 290,000 followers now. The first year I posted on LinkedIn, I had like 60,000 followers. And this was years ago. So that was like a pretty big following. And suddenly I could call myself like the biggest podcaster on LinkedIn, you know, competing with like Jay Shetty and all these other huge podcasters, but just on the LinkedIn platform. So I'd reach out to all the different podcast tools that I knew, like Riverside. sure. I'd reach out to all the different apps, CastBox, Player FM, Podbean, all my hosting, like all the different hosting providers. And I'd say like, hey, I'm the biggest podcaster on LinkedIn. I will post about your app, your email newsletter, your website in exchange for you promoting me on your website, promoting me in your app, featuring me here. And then I got all these different features and it helped my podcast grow. And in return, I posted about