Young and Profiting with Hala Taha (Entrepreneurship, Sales, Marketing)

Morgan Housel made his first investment when he was 18, putting $1,000 into a certificate of deposit at his local bank. When he started to make some interest on that investment, he was hooked. He devoured books on finance and economics, eventually becoming a financial columnist for The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. In today’s episode, Morgan shares why he thinks finance is more like psy...

Back in the late '60s, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith joined the fad of studying philosophy and began learning about Buddhism. Buddhism taught him that we can only find peace in what we already have, and what works for someone won’t work for everyone. He now utilizes those teachings as a top-rated executive coach who works with some of the most powerful business leaders in the world. In this episode of YA...

James Clear grew up dreaming of becoming a professional baseball player. But after suffering a serious head injury from being hit in the face with a baseball bat in high school, he had to regroup and figure out how best to play the cards he had been dealt. Thanks to his diligent work ethic, he rebounded to become a college pitcher before embarking on a career as a writer, blogger, best-selling aut...

Since David quit his job as a waiter at the Cheesecake Factory a decade ago, his successful businesses, compelling story, and unique teaching style have helped him build a large and loyal following. Now, he hosts The Social Proof Podcast and runs the Sleepless Knights Coaching Program to guide entrepreneurs and small business owners to entrepreneurial success. David is empowering a new generation...

When 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in his home state of Missouri in 2014, Morgan DeBaun was working at a technology company in Silicon Valley. Unhappy with her job and dismayed about the media coverage of the story, she decided to change course. She co-founded Blavity, which became a leading digital media company for Black culture and millennials. Morgan has succeeded despite steep odds to...

When Justin Bariso moved to Germany, he learned a popular phrase about German workplace culture: “no complaints is enough of a compliment.” Determined to make his office cultures more uplifting, he worked with German executives on their emotional intelligence, or EQ. In the process, he started writing about EQ for Inc.com, and his articles now draw in over a million readers each month. In this epi...

Dr. Robert Sapolsky has accomplished so much in his life and career, including winning the MacArthur “genius” grant and authoring several best-selling books. But as he puts it himself in his most recent book: “I’ve been very lucky in my life, something which I certainly did not earn.” This sentiment is consistent with his view that we lack free will entirely, and in today’s episode, Professor Sapo...

At the age of 22, Farnoosh Torabi was already over $30,000 in debt, making $18 an hour and trying to live in New York City on a diet of canned tuna and $5 Footlong Subway sandwiches. After being laid off from her job, she started to work for herself full-time and resolved to climb out of debt and make it in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Along the way, she learned some tough lesson...

During the Holocaust, Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was sent to a concentration camp. He survived by focusing on his one goal: to return home to his family. Frankl saw that once people lost hope for their future, they ultimately lost their life. Dr. Benjamin Hardy has applied Frankl’s research to his own life as an organizational psychologist. In this episode, Ben returns to YAP to discuss h...

One day, when Tim Storey was at a 7-Eleven, he met a young, struggling actor who was begging for money. His backpack was stolen, so he did not have access to his schizophrenia medication. Tim helped this man reconnect with his mom and get psychiatric help at a mental health facility. This is just one example of the thousands of lives Tim has touched through his work as a humanitarian and thought l...

Ben Greenfield grew up in northern Idaho, a self-described homeschooled geek who played the violin and chess and spent most of his time reading or writing fantasy fiction. But, as a teenager, he discovered tennis and working out, which led him to buy a pair of cheap 10-pound dumbbells at the local sporting goods store and transform himself into an athlete. Eventually, he grew up to be a bodybuilde...

When Jay Samit was in his early 20s, he maxed out his credit cards designing a new machine for reading lottery tickets. However, his design was beaten by a competitor who was bribing the judges. When he flew back to L.A., he realized that his kiosk design would be perfect for airports. He turned his failure into an opportunity to solve another problem. Since then, Jay has been helping business own...

As a preschool teacher in her twenties, Tiffany Aliche was off to a good start in her career. Then, she was the victim of a scam that left her deep in debt, and she got laid off from her teaching job during the recession. Tiffany moved in with her parents and started over, learned from her financial mistakes, and then helped friends and family learn from them as well. Now she has inspired and educ...

Chase Hughes became disturbingly aware of serious issues that plagued our intelligence operations. From interrogation to asset recruiting, our national intelligence personnel were getting training that was no better than what they could have gleaned from a YouTube video. He began to develop a map for influence and behavior profiling to enable people in our agencies to read humans and influence the...

Over the past few decades, will.i.am has made a name for himself in a variety of fields. He is perhaps most well-known as the founder and lead member of the Black Eyed Peas. But he is also an experienced tech entrepreneur, creative innovator, futurist, and philanthropist. For years, he has invested in software and operating systems incorporating AI, natural language understanding, and voice comput...

When the pandemic struck in 2020, Hala Taha’s role model, her father, died a tragic death from COVID-19. He was still a well-respected doctor and was in the middle of writing a book when he died. His death reminded Hala that life is too short to act small, so she launched YAP Media, a multimillion-dollar media agency that serves some of the biggest names in the business and entrepreneurship space....

Pat Flynn lost what he thought was his dream job as an architect during the 2008 financial crisis. But that setback led him to launch several successful online businesses and build a following of millions around the world. In this episode, Pat is going to give some pointers on marketing and how to build your audience and online business the smart way, including how to create your own superfans and...

It all started with a three-page vision statement for Joey Zwillinger and his company, Allbirds, which is revolutionizing the footwear industry with its eco-friendly and sustainable products. Joey and his co-founder Tim Brown set out to emulate nature’s brilliant design skills by creating the now iconic Wool Runner, a shoe made from Merino wool, and to create a sustainable global company in the pr...

Jen Gottlieb was living what she thought was her dream: she was living in New York and had a role on a major television show. Then, in the span of a single week, her show got canceled and her cheating boyfriend left her for one of her friends, and Jen was left holding the pieces. But Jen turned her breakdown into a transformation, launching her own successful career and company, and today she help...

Karissa Bodnar was in her early twenties and working her way up the cosmetic ladder, from a make-up artist at Sephora to Clarisonic and then to L’Oréal. But when she hit a brick wall after losing a close friend to cancer at 24, she came to the realization that she had to stop waiting around and build the beauty company of her dreams. She started her own company from her one-bedroom apartment, taki...

Growing up, Harley Finkelstein had a passion for entrepreneurship. He became one of the first vendors on Shopify, and his T-shirt company became a survival tool for him in college. He realized that he could never see himself working for anyone else. Harley is now the President of Shopify and a respected entrepreneur. In this episode, Harley unpacks his lifelong journey as a serial entrepreneur. He...

Prior to 2008, Chris Voss was the lead international kidnapping negotiator for the FBI and the FBI’s hostage negotiation representative for the National Security Council’s Hostage Working Group. Now, he’s using his wisdom to teach business leaders how to negotiate and land deals. In this episode of YAPClassic, Chris will explain several advanced negotiation techniques, like how to conduct an accus...

Jaspreet Singh grew up in a family of doctors and it was assumed he would become a doctor too. But he decided to try a different path. He started his first business, an event planning company, when he was in college, and also started investing in real estate. Motivated to help other entrepreneurs avoid his early mistakes, he started the Minority Mindset YouTube channel, where he teaches his follow...

How can you leverage LinkedIn to generate leads and grow your business? LinkedIn has more than 135 million active users every day, so chances are, your ideal client is logged into LinkedIn right now. In this episode of The Goal Digger Podcast, Hala unpacks her top tips for LinkedIn marketing, like how we can make our content skimmable, what keywords we should use in our posts, and why we should pr...

For more than two decades, Gary Brecka worked in the life insurance business, using medical records and demographic data to predict life expectancy. One day he had an epiphany: there were human beings on the other sides of his spreadsheets and he wasn’t going to spend one more day of his own life predicting death. Instead, he would use his knowledge to help people live healthier, happier, and long...