Hala Taha: The Mindset That Turned Rejection into a Multi-Million Dollar Business | Human Behavior | YAPClassic

Hey guys, welcome back to Young Improveding Podcast. Today's episode is really special for me. I'm sharing a recording of a keynote I gave at MIT's 2022 Gathering of the Titans.

And it's this incredible annual conference where some of the most successful CEOs in the world

come together to exchange big ideas and real stories.

“Now, honestly, this was one of the most vulnerable things I've ever done.”

It was the first time I shared my story this openly and publicly. The full journey, all the lows, the highs, the rejection, the losses. And the lessons that really shaped who I am today. Now, this is a couple years old now. However, I feel like the story is still really resonating and it's super inspiring.

And I got a lot of positive feedback from this keynote. I went viral on YouTube, so I think you guys are going to really enjoy it. Without further delay, here's my keynote speech at MIT. [MUSIC] >> Halataha is our speaker and presenter this afternoon.

And I asked her a few weeks ago if she was interested in doing this. And I started thinking about, what was that drove me to want to ask her to do it? And there's three words. The words are this, hustle, smart, and tenacious. And I'm a person that loves tenacious people.

And she is probably one of the most tenacious people I've ever met in my life. For those of you guys that notice Brian Scootemore or my LinkedIn profiles are on like altras around sound, it's because of the work she does. She's the queen of LinkedIn amongst other royal titles. She has a podcast called The Young and Profiting Podcast.

It has millions of millions downloads, hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Her accolades in the podcast world have dubbed her the name of podcast princess. She's on the cover of podcast magazine. And that's like her night job.

Her day job is running an incredible, incredible marketing agency called Yacht Media.

And I know this because I'm actually a client of hers as it's Brian.

“When I think of her, I'm like, this is an entrepreneur that we all need to know.”

And I felt like one of the best gifts I could give to the group was to bring her here for your own meter and learn her story. So without further ado, Halita. [APPLAUSE] So much thanks to Darius for inviting me today.

The past couple of days have been so wonderful. And when Darius first asked me to come speak to you all, I thought he wanted me to give a LinkedIn training. And I was like, sure, yeah, I could do a LinkedIn training. I could teach everybody how to podcast.

And then he was like, no, Halita, I want you to share your story. And I have to say some of these things that I'm about to say in the speech.

I've never said on any other podcast.

I've never said in any other room. So I'm just telling my authentic story so that you guys can understand my experience. And I hope that you leave this conversation having a new perspective, learning something new, and finding some value in this conversation. So I think my story best starts off with my dad.

So my dad is Palestinian, and he was born in 1943. That was five years before the NEPCA. The NEPCA is the Arabic word for catastrophe. And the Palestinian catastrophe was in 1943. And that's when 600 villages were burned, 750,000 Palestinians were made of refugees,

and 15,000 Palestinians died. And I guess you could say my dad was one of the lucky ones. Because he wasn't pushed behind the wall. He wasn't sent to Gaza to become a refugee. And in the open air prison, so to speak, he was in the West Bank.

And so my dad grew up as a poor farmer's son. And he only lived on Figs and Peter Red. He would tell me two of his youngest siblings died when he was younger. They were a family of eight that lived in one room, and he lived in extreme poverty.

And my dad knew that there was only one way out at the time. And that was to be very educated and to get a scholarship. And so he decided he'd be the first person in his whole village to go to college. And from when he was a little boy, he decided he'd be the smartest kid in school, and that he'd get perfect marks so that he could achieve that dream

and elevate his whole family out of poverty. And he did, my dad had extreme grit. And so he had no light. He had no running electricity. It's our no running water.

And the only light he had was on his walks to school. And so he would read his books on his long walk to school.

“And that's how he was able to study and become the smartest kid in his glass.”

Get perfect marks.

So my dad went off to Cairo and he got a scholarship there.

“And he ended up going to America and becoming a doctor, finishing his residence here,”

becoming a surgeon, becoming chief of surgery, and multiple hospitals, and New Jersey, and ended up owning a medical center. And he literally brought his whole family out of poverty. My dad was so generous. He was so humble and his favorite story to shop out was tears.

And he would give all his money away. He put all his kids to college. He put all his nieces in nephew in Palestine through college and through grad school. And essentially lifted my whole family out of poverty. And made sure everybody would be okay.

So in terms of my experience, the first time that I realized I was different was my summers going to Palestine. We had a house in Palestine. And actually my whole family lived on one street. A bunch of people had moved to America.

And so it was this town. They called it the American Village in Palestine. Because it was a street half the people. We're actually Americans and had summer homes. They're and we're not there most of the year.

“And so I remember when I finally realized what was going on,”

that was the first time I realized I was different. Because when I was in America, we were kind of treated like an American family. Sorry, an Italian family. Everybody knew we were ethnic, knew we would go back home over the summer. But we were just treated like a normal family.

Maybe like an Italian family in my white, a fluent town that I grew up in and watched a New Jersey. But when I went to Palestine, I'd certainly enjoy realized how different I was.

I remember my dad being this amazing, respected doctor in America.

We'd go to the Israeli airport and he'd get interrogated for hours. And we'd be sitting on the airport floor like waiting for dad to get done with his interrogation every time we went. I remember having to drive on separate roads. Even though I was a U.S. citizen, not allowed to drive on the same roads in Palestine.

I remember having to take super quick showers because we weren't rationed, water like everybody else because we were a Palestinian family. I remember almost dying at a checkpoint one day when we landed. And we had all our luggage in a van. And these checkpoints are super crowded.

And it's super chaotic. And everybody was saying, go, go, go, like all the soldiers. And there was nowhere to go. We almost fell off a cliff and we almost died. Because our, our van almost fell off a cliff and it was my sister saying,

push the luggage to one side and we did everybody push the luggage to one side on the van and we ended up making it and we didn't fall off the cliff. And I literally almost died when I was like 12 years old at a checkpoint. And that was Palestine because in America, I was totally normal. And we were respective family.

And in terms of my experience,

I'm growing up in America, I was always wanted to be a star.

All my siblings wanted to be doctors. And so I have three siblings. They all ended up being doctors. I have three cousins who lived down the street. They all ended up being doctors.

And so there were seven kids in the family. And I was the only one who never wanted to be a doctor. Not one day in my life. I always wanted to be a star. I love to sing.

Actually, it's a big joke in my family that I sang before I spoke. And my first words were singing a song back to my mom. And I was always super outgoing. I was the kid that was dancing and singing at all the family parties. And always like the star of the show.

And I had a great childhood. You know, I was lived a decently privileged life

in terms of like we always had money.

I lived, I had a good family. And I did great in school. I was popular. I used to be the lead in all the talent shows that get on every sports team.

And everything was great. And that was until 9/11 hit. So 9/11, I was a freshman in high school.

“And I remember, at that time, there was some build-up happening”

in terms of aeropate. And I was starting to get a taste of the oppression that I was feeling in Palestine suddenly was happening at home. And I remember learning about the planes hitting and feeling this pain in my stomach like, oh my god.

Everyone's going to hate us. And this is going to be so bad. And I remember being so devastated when I found out because my family was so proud to be American. And my dad loved America.

And I was like, this sucks because everyone's going to hate us. And we actually love being American. And so I remember actually crying on the floor historically crying, calling up Z100.

It was a very popular radio station at the time. Trying to get through because they were having this whole thing where people were calling in, telling their experiences. Everybody was sharing their thoughts. And I so desperately trying to get through to let everybody know

that we didn't feel this way that none of the Arabic people knew about it and that we were just a shocked and a sad as everybody. But at that point, my life was changed. And for the first time ever, I learned that gatekeepers don't only exist at checkpoints.

So my life was turned upside down.

And from then on, I went from the American girl next door

to never getting any opportunities.

I tried out for the plays. I never got a part. I tried out for the cheerleading team. I didn't make it. I tried out for the volleyball team.

I didn't make it.

“They didn't even let me in the talent show every year”

when I hands down had the best voice in school. And so that ended up really impacting me, because I didn't get into a great college. I had great grades. But I got into a meter of course school

because it looked like I had no ambition. But I had lots of ambition. I wasn't given any opportunities. And so I went to New Jersey Institute of Technology. It was in New York, New Jersey, a super diverse school.

And from the moment I stepped foot on that campus, my life changed. First of all, it was four years after 9/11. And so four years after 9/11, things kind of cool down. You know, people were starting to be more accepting.

And the other thing is that it was a super diverse school. Previously, I went to a very white Christian Jewish school. And I was like the only brown kid in school. And so I started getting opportunity left and right. And I had so little fear of rejection,

because I had been rejected so much. I just thought it was a part of life. That I tried out for everything. And I'd make it. I tried out for the play.

I was a lead. I tried out for tuning. I was the captain. I was in my sorority.

“And I was obsessed with all these extra-curricular activities.”

Because I got no opportunities in high school. That I was doing very poorly in school. I didn't care about class. Because I was like, oh, I'm finally able to do the things I was never able to do.

And I was just really embracing that experience. At the same time, I found out about something called the Law of Attraction. So the Law of Attraction almost became my religion. I was never religious.

My family wasn't very religious. I grew up Muslim. I never related to that. I feel it's kind of a sexist religion.

And I never ever related to that.

And nobody ever forced me to relate to that. So I found the Law of Attraction. And it literally was like my new religion. I almost got into like a cult. I was obsessed with Abraham and Esther Hicks.

And they were these big Law of Attraction people. I listened to their CDs all day. I'd read all of their books. It was like a new religion for me. And I got super into it.

And I did affirmations every day in visualizations every day. And I literally believed that life was limitless. I thought I could create my own dream life. And I was so naive. I really believe this.

“And honestly, my life just skyrocketed from there.”

So as 19 years old, I found the Law of Attraction. I really was super confident at this point. I was crushing it in college other than school. But the extracurricular part, I was crushing it. And so I ended up at the time.

I always knew that I wanted to use my voice to impact the world and make a positive difference. That's my purpose in life to impact the world with my voice. And you know, you often don't know exactly how that's going to be. And at the time, I thought I was supposed to be a famous singer.

Because that was always my natural talents.

And so I was a kid. And so I set out to a song right. And I worked with all these different producers. And I started writing music. And I had this bright idea.

I was in the radio club. I did like every activity in college. And I was like, well, I'm in the radio club. I could probably get an internship at a radio station and push my music to the DJs and break that way.

And so I did. I applied to all these radio stations. And I ended up getting a job at Hot 97. Hi, 97 is the world's number one hip-hop and arm be station. This is about 10 years ago.

It was a huge deal to work at that station. All the people, all the DJs were like celebrities in the local region. And I ended up getting this internship. I did a great job. They ended up promoting me to be like the sacred intern

in the studio area. And I was Andy Martinez's assistant. She's a voice of New York. One of the most famous personalities in the world. And I was essentially the assistant producer

on the Angie Martinez Show, the biggest show in America. So this was supposed to be a normal college internship. But then they started to say, "Holy, can you come every day?" You know, "Can you start working on the weekend? Can you come at night?"

And you're doing such a great job. And they wanted me to be there more often. So I ended up dropping out of school. And I thought I had this great opportunity. I was failing out of school anyway.

And, you know, I was just so enamored by this life. Because I met every celebrity you can think of. J. Lowe, Kim Kardashian, Chris Brown, Kanye. I was hanging out with these celebrities that night. I was 19 years old.

And so it was just a big opportunity for me. So I did it. I quit my job and I started this apprenticeship at Hot 97. And I worked for free there for three years. And I got never paid a dollar.

I would make my money at night, hosting parties and selling showcase tickets with the DJs. And I did everything for that station. I was the showrunner. I would enter the phones.

I would run the commercials. I would go in at 2am in the morning and run the deletboards when I had to make sure that music went on for the world. All night, that was really scary. If I had to go to the bathroom or something,

that there'd be like dead air. But I love that job.

So all my friends knew me as Hala from Hot 97.

“Everybody would be like, oh my gosh, how'd you get that job?”

Like, you have the coolest job in the world. And I was being primed to be the next Angie Martinez. The way that it works in radio is that you work for free for many years.

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QO, no miss calls, no missed customers. So at the same time, I was feeling a lot of pressure because all of my siblings and cousins were on the medical track. And to all the outside world, even though I was learning

so many new skills and even though I was doing so many cool things, I was like a party girl to everybody else. And they thought I was throwing my life away, dropped out of college and I'd go to Thanksgiving and I was like the black sheep, the embarrassment of the family.

My dad always believed in me.

But everybody else really looked down on me at this point in my life. And I was starting to feel a lot of pressure because I was like, man, I've been working here for three years. They haven't given me a job yet.

And my ever going to even get paid minimum wage. Like I feel like an embarrassment. And so finally, a position opened up at Hot 97. The producer of the show. And I was doing his job for about a year.

And they ended up firing him because he was like a deadbeat. And I was already doing his job for over a year. And so I was like, OK, finally, I'm going to get the producer role and everything's going to be OK. And then I come to find out that they gave the job

to somebody who worked in the video department who never spent a day on the show. And the worst part about it is that they expected me to train him. And so yeah, I was not young and profiting at this point. I was young and pissed.

So on the first day of his work, his name was Drew Schae.

And we were actually really good friends. While I was working at Hot 97, I also had online radio shows on the side with all the up and coming deities. Many of these DJs are like super famous on the radio now.

And I still host little radio shows with them pretending to be Angie Martinez. And so we were actually good friends. And I was young, stupid, whatever you want to say upset. And I texted him.

And I said, I don't feel good today.

“If you want to learn how to be producer,”

learn it on your own. And he showed that text to Angie because he had to explain why he wasn't getting training today. And she fired me on the spot. And she cut my keycarts.

And not only that, she didn't let me say goodbye to anybody. All my friends and mentors for three years. I dropped out of college for this lady. She didn't let me pack up my stuff. And worst of all, she told everyone, you'll be fired

if you talk to Holla. And she blackbulged me from the industry. And she thought that I would trivil and die, probably. So yeah, it was. And so at the time, I felt like I had died.

My identity was taken away from me. Everybody knew me as Holla from Hot Nights 7. It was extremely embarrassing. Like, all my social media, I'm saying Holla, Hot Nights 7. Everything was Hot Nights 7.

I had my whole life was wrapped in this brand. And so I was so embarrassed. And I literally felt like somebody died. It was one of the worst moments in my life. But I was so used to rejection.

And so it's kind of funny. I was fired on a Thursday. By Sunday, I had a new idea. And I decided I was going to create something called the sorority of hip hop.

And I was going to recoup all the girls in the hip hop entertainment industry who worked for I hurt radio, VH1, you name it. And we'd all band together. And I'd create a blog site.

Blogs were super hot at the time.

And we would band together and become more powerful

and have a platform. And so I started working on this idea. I was fired on Thursday. I started working on my website and learning how to code websites on Sunday.

By the end of two weeks, I recruited 14 girls off of Twitter and Craigslist. And we formed the sorority of hip hop. And I was the president. And we started a blog site.

I went back to school to finish my undergrad and make my parents proud. And at the same time, I was building this website. Within three months, we are one of the most popular hip hop in our NBA stations and blog sites in the world.

Within, I also had about 50 girls at that time. I had 150 girls outside of the organization over about three years. So we got all this notoriety because I figured out how to hack Twitter.

I got all these celebrities to retweet us and we blew up that way. So three months into it, MTV scouts us. We did a little pilot, nothing really came out of it, but we didn't care.

We were like, this is three months in,

“what's gonna happen six months from now, who cares, right?”

So we keep building and building. We have online radio shows, interviewing celebrities, we're hosting concerts and events. We have this blog site that's going viral all the time. Everything's good.

We're not really monetizing that much because I didn't really figure out the business aspect of it, but we were making a little bit of money. And finally, MTV reaches back out, and at the time, I was getting scouted for multiple reality TV shows.

Love and hip hop wanted me to be on their show. Oxygen wanted me to have a show. And MTV was like, listen, holla, we just had Jersey Shore, we're gonna make you a star.

And so I did, I chose them, and I was gonna be the lead.

“I was getting paid three times as much as everybody else.”

And so they filmed us all summer. We were broke girls, caddy girls. It was fun time, and they got us the studio on Broadway. And it was had me on signs. It was hooked up with all this furniture.

We got our hair and makeup done every day. We were mic'd up and filmed on the street. They filmed us in restaurants at my parents' house. They filmed us all summer. We had a concert.

It was absolutely amazing. Unfortunately, when it was about to air two weeks before, my producer gave me a call. And she's like, holla, I'm sorry, but we decided to move in another direction.

And again, it was one of those moments where I was like, oh my God, again, I did all the work. I did everything right. I made the right choices. I worked my butt off.

How is this happening again? And they didn't give me a reason why they didn't choose to show up, but they decided not to air it. And that was a moment in my life where I feel like my thought that life was limitless, really fizzled out.

And I thought, you know what, holla, you're really unrealistic.

“And life is not this easy, your parents are right,”

your family is right. You should just be normal in a real job. And it's time to just be normal.

So I thought I'd never get back on a mic.

I shut down the group. I had 50 girls that were extremely mad at me. But I shut down the group. I shut down the blog. And I decided that I was going to go get my MBA.

And that I was going to be a normal person and get a normal job in corporate. And that was time to be a normal person. So I ended up wanting to get my MBA. Unfortunately, I had a 2.3 undergrad GPA.

So it was really difficult to get into school. So I decided that I was going to use my networking skills. It's one of my strongest skills. And I decided I was going to target my alma mater, the director of Alumni Association at NGIT.

And I would beg her to get into the MBA program. And so I emailed her every other day for like a month. And I just wouldn't leave her alone. And I was like, can I get you a coffee? Can I buy you lunch?

Can I come there?

“And finally, she agreed to take a meeting with me.”

And I explained to her my whole story, how I had the story of hip hop, how I worked at HANA seven, and how even though on paper, I looked like a shrub. I really was a hard worker. And she believed in me.

And I told her, if you let me in this program, I promise I'll get a 4.0 and I'll get straight A's. And she said, how if you keep that promise, I'll let you in the program. And she let me in the program.

I ended up getting a 4.0 graduating with straight A's. Number one in my class. And it really set off my corporate career. At the same time, I got my MBA. I leveraged that to get an internship at Hewlett Packard.

And I was making 70 grand a year. And to me, that was like a lot of money. And I was like finally making it. And I did that. And at the same time at HPA, I started something called

the Young Employee Network. So the Young Employee Network is an employee resource group at Hewlett Packard.

Hewlett Packard actually has an amazing company culture.

And so in my office, though, there was no culture. Nobody talked to each other outside of departments. Like it was super boring and bland. And I being like the little entrepreneur inside the organization was like, oh no, we've got to change this.

So I got everybody to sign a petition. And we started a Young Employee Network at the office. And I ended up launching their first holiday party, their first company picnic, all of their charity events. And I infused the whole office with culture.

And so at the same time, I was doing amazing in my career. I thought I was going to be so behind everybody else because I started my corporate career so late. But that wasn't true at all. I had learned outside of an organization.

And so I was so tech savvy. And I was like the digital whiskey. I got promoted from Roll to Roll. I had every single job on the marketing team. And I was like the C-suite pet, especially because I was

doing all this culture stuff. And I was interviewing the CEOs, the CEO and the CMO all the time. And I was really the face of the Young Employees at Hewlett Packard. So I did this presidency of the Young Employee Network for two years at Hewlett Packard.

And then I finally thought, you know what? Let me set my sights even higher. I want to be the president of the global Young Employee Network. And so I was on the recruitment chair of that organization. And I paid my dues.

I created something called HPE Spirit League. At the time, there was 300,000 employees across the organization. And I launched a week-long event with daily themes around the world where I was emailing the entire organization every day as if I was the CEO.

And they still do this event to this day. And I created it. It was like a week-long event called HPE Spirit League. So I thought I for sure was a shoe-in to be the president of the Global Young Employee Network.

But of course, I was wrong. The HR director for some reason didn't like me. She didn't give me the position.

She gave it to a guy who never was even involved

in the organization. And they didn't even keep me on the board. They kicked me out.

I just worked for free. I basically had a side hustle inside of this organization. And they just stopped me out and by the way, that HR director left one month later. I left two.

I went to Disney Streaming Services. And at the same time, I started Young Improveding Podcast. And I decided that if I couldn't lead the 7,000 Young Employees

all over the world, I'd feel a Packard that I would lead 7 million

young professionals across the world instead. And I'd start my own thing, Young Improveding. So I started Young Improveding Podcast in April of 2018. I'm going to fast forward to 2020 now. 2020 was both the best year and the worst year of my life.

2020 was the year that my life changed forever. And I feel like that's the most pivotal year in my whole life. So I'll start off with January. So at the time, I was just my ex-boyfriend. And we were living in Brooklyn.

And he was super paranoid about COVID. We had some friends overseas who were telling us it was pretty bad. And in America, in New York, nobody cared, right? It was just business as usual.

But it was his birthday. And that morning, we decided we were going to go to the pharmacy and we were going to try to get some masks and alcohol on gloves and just play it safe. And so we go to one pharmacy.

We go to the aisle, nothing's there. OK, this is weird. We go to the next one, nothing's there. We go to 10 different pharmacies. We cannot find any alcohol, any masks, any gloves.

At this time, nobody knew about COVID. And we're like, everybody-- a lot of people know something that we don't know. And things are about to get real. I remember wearing a mask on the train.

And I was the only one on the train wearing a mask. Everybody looking at me like I was crazy. But I was trying to be ultra protective of my father. Because at the time, my father had diabetes.

And he had to get his toe-lampitated. And in January and February, he was in and out of the hospital.

“And so I remember working at Disney Streaming Services”

at the time I had my podcast. And so my days were like this. I'd wake up at 6am, work on my podcast. On the train, I'd do my LinkedIn post. I was going my LinkedIn following.

I'd go to work during lunchtime. I'd be interviewing people like Brian Scudemar in the phone booth. And then I'd finish work. Go home. My boyfriend at the time was a music producer.

He worked nights. And so I was able to work on my podcast at night. And I do my engagement on social media. And I literally just worked all day all night. And I all weekend too.

And I did that for many years. Around February, March lockdown happens. So this is actually in March. Lockdown happens. Disney tells everybody to start working from home.

We're in lockdown.

First, nobody knows anything about COVID.

I don't know anybody who had COVID. All we hear about is just the crazy stories. I'm definitely afraid of getting COVID. I am the most protective person and I was for months about not getting COVID.

I remember being on LinkedIn and telling everybody how to wash their hands properly and how to go grocery shopping in the right way and trying to be like a role model about how to not get COVID. And so March it's a week into lockdown.

My sister gives me a call. A little bit of a backstory here. My dad was getting hyperbaric oxygen treatments for his toe because he got his toe amputated. And me and my sister and my brothers were begging them

like mom and dad stopped going and getting the treatments.

“But it was the only way that my dad was going to get better.”

And they really wanted treatments. I actually spent $20,000 to buy my dad a hyperbaric oxygen machine at home, but it was too late. And so my sister gives me a call. And she says, "Hala, mom and dad have COVID.

Your brother's home, he has COVID. And your aunt and uncle down the street have COVID too." I didn't have a car at the time. I was living the city. I'm going to pick you up and like if you want to come

and pick you up in an hour, you have an hour to decide if you want to come home. Being like, considering my parents gave me everything in life, I was like, "Of course I have to go home. I don't-- if I'm going to get COVID, I'm going to get COVID."

But of course, I have to go home. So my sister picks me up and we go home. And she's a doctor. So we have full hazmat suits on. We have an N95 mask.

We have sunglasses, gloves, and I remember walking into a house, and my house usually smells lovely, food, or flowers. It smelled so bad of sickness. And I was like, "Oh boy, like this is crazy."

And me and my sister were so paranoid. We thought we were going to die. Because at the time nobody-- it was so scary. We didn't know anybody who had COVID.

We were the first family impacted out of everybody.

And so we were like, "Are we going to die?"

“Is everybody going to-- like, is everybody going to die?”

Like, what is happening? And my sister played the role of Doctor. And I went from top podcaster and business executive at Disney to janitor. And that was my job. And so I was just focusing on cleaning the house, cooking,

making sure everybody was OK. And for two weeks, we would be in full gear. And the only time we would eat would be at 10 or 11 p.m. once we were done taking care of everybody. All we had was like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

We had like old blankets from when we were kids.

“Because we didn't know anything about the disease.”

So we assumed everything upstairs was just like contaminated and had COVID all over it. So everybody started to get better except for my dad. My dad started to deteriorate even worse. And so at a certain point, me and my sister were like,

you know what? Effort. We're going to get COVID. It's obvious. Like who are we kidding?

And I stopped wearing even a mask. And I just concentrated on being with my dad. And so we were feeding him. He was like coughing in our faces. We didn't care.

And so we just were like trying to take care of our dad. And then a point came where we felt like we had to send him to the hospital. And we didn't want to send him to the hospital. Because at that time, the hospitals were totally packed.

And we knew that he had really bad eyesight and that it would be really difficult for him to be alone in that hospital setting. And we knew we wouldn't be allowed to visit him. But it came to a point where we had to make that

difficult decision. And I remember when we had to take him. That was the last time I spoke to my dad when he was alert. And he said, if you guys somebody at the hospital,

you're never going to see me again.

But we had to make that decision because we were trying to save his life. And he was right. That was the last time I ever saw him alert.

“And so I remember that time being so difficult.”

We were-- I was working from home. I remember working at HP. I'd be working at HP and have my dad on Zoom next to me with a huge trait. He had tubes in his nose.

He always looked super uncomfortable. He didn't look peaceful. He looked very suffering. And so that was super hard. And I still had to go to work and figure that all out.

And the biggest regret is that we weren't able to actually visit him in the hospital. We weren't allowed to go visit him. And actually, I didn't see him until he died. And so that was super difficult.

But they allowed me to be on Zoom. And my dad couldn't see well. But I thought that he could hear my voice. And so I spent most of my time during the month that he was in that hospital.

I didn't do anything really other than work. And then sing to my father on Zoom and try to make it as peaceful as possible for him. And so he passed away May 15th. That's actually the same day as the Nupka Day

that is commemorated when he passed away on May 15th.

“And he had like the shittyest funeral ever.”

They buried him with his shoes with his cell phone. Only six people were allowed at the funeral. And it was really hard for me. And you would think that that would break anyone. You would think that that would just--

I would just sign off for the year. And that, OK, this year is over. Worst year of my life. But it wasn't. It was actually the best year of my life.

Because I was the first half of 2020.

And the second half of 2020 ended up being the best year of my life. So at the time, when my dad was in the hospital, I met this lady named Heather Monahan. Heather Monahan is a huge influencer on LinkedIn.

And I interviewed her from my show. And she kind of wouldn't leave me alone after. I had a team of volunteers since I started a young and profiting podcast. By episode two, I had my first volunteer.

He's now my business partner. By episode eight, I had 10 volunteers in a Slack channel, helping me work on my show. And so I knew everything about podcasting. So I teach one guy in Estonia.

I had a build websites and run that for me. I teach one guy in Atlanta. I had to do my videos. I taught one person how to do my social. And I would just teach all these interns and volunteers

how to work on my show and create it a Slack channel. And that was basically our office. And Heather was like, your videos are so good in different hall. Like, can you do this for me on LinkedIn?

And I was like, nope, I'm really busy. Like, my dad's in the hospital. Like, it's not the right time. I just have a volunteer group. Like, I don't, I can't do this for you.

We can only do it for me. And she wouldn't let up. And I was interested in her being my mentor. So she asked me for a call so that I could teach her how to make those videos.

And I was like, sure, I'll teach you how to make these videos. So I take a call with Heather. And I show her my Slack channel. I'm showing her all our processes and our templates. And she's like, holla, I just had a call with Vayner Media.

Your stuff is better than theirs. I have to be your first client. You have to start a business. Just trust me. And I was like, all right, I'll do your videos.

And so she paid us like 600 bucks a month to do her videos. Like, it was nothing, but then it ended up being, I took over her whole LinkedIn. Then I took over her whole podcast.

Our second client was like a $30,000 retainer.

And it was a very powerful billionaire client that we got.

And then everything changed. I was able to hire all my volunteer team. I was able to expand my team and continue to grow this side hustle. What's up, Yav Gang? When you start a business, nobody really tells you how many hats

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Yep, fam, 26 is the year. I'm fully focused on growing my personal brand. I'm taking it to the next level for years. I was focused on my company now. I'm focused on building my brand.

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As entrepreneurs, we love to build, create, invent, but entrepreneurship can be overwhelming, especially in the beginning when you're first launching your company.

“It's really hard to figure out like all the steps you need to do.”

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It is very important you do so as a business owner. So one thing leads to another, and I end up where I am today. I have full-time entrepreneur. I quit my job at Disney.

and grow it very large to be the number one education show across all podcasts. I got the cover of podcast magazine January of 2021. I learned that I was going to be interviewing Matthew McConaughey at the end of 2020.

And so my whole year turned around.

And in my podcast, I always ask one question

at the end of the show and Brian and Darious both know this.

“I always say, what is your secret to profiting in life?”

And so I always interview all these people who are mega successful. And I never ever thought that I had value to actually contribute to that question. What is your secret to profiting in life?

And then after 2020 was the first time that I actually felt like I could help answer that question with my secrets to profiting in life. And so I'd love to go over that with you guys next. And I hope you're enjoying this conversation.

[APPLAUSE] OK, so secret number one, create your own lane. When a gatekeeper is telling you no, instead of going and trying to beg that gatekeeper, instead of looking for other similar gatekeepers,

create your own path. Because I found that creating my own path

was always a fast track to success.

When I was fired from hot in '97, I started strawberrywant.com and the story of hip hop, and it was one of the best experiences of my life. It didn't end the way I quite imagined. But I learned a lot of skills.

And it was still one of the best experiences of my life. When I didn't get MTV, I ended up owning my own life, going back to school. When I didn't get the young employee network, I started a young and profiting podcast.

And thank God for those knows. Because if it wasn't for those knows, I wouldn't be where I am today. And then in terms of creating your own path, there's some ways to turbocharge that, having a team,

which I always had, and having a team believe in you. And then also having somebody other than yourself believe in you. So I felt like my father also turbocharged my destiny,

because he always believed in me, whether anybody else did or not.

“And then the second secret to profiting in life”

is finding your talent stack. So I actually learned this from Scott Adams. He's the creator of Dilbert. So that's a very famous cartoon. It's syndicated in all the newspapers.

And it's basically like a funny cartoon about this guy who's in business. And so Scott Adams really taught me about this idea of talent stacking. So for him, he was a decent writer.

He was a decent drawer, and he was funny. And he knew a bit about business and computer and the IT world. So he put that all together, and he created Dilbert. And it was a massive success.

Now he wasn't the best in all these things. He wasn't the best drawer, the funniest guy in the world. He was just decently good at all of it. He put it all together, and he had a unique offering that he could share to the world.

I think that my story is very similar. I was a great potcaster and my show took off right away because I had the experiences to build my talent stack to make me the best potcaster. And eventually the best CEO of Yat Media.

I had radio experience. I had blogging experience. I had ran multiple social media channels for Fortune 500 companies. And I put all these things together and knew how to build teams

and recruit teams. I put all those skills together and created the podcast. And then eventually Yat Media. So find your talent stack.

“And the next one is that life is limitless.”

When my father was dying, I never felt so much fire in my belly. I wanted to take over the world. Heather Monahan gave me a kick in the butt. And after that, I was ready to take over the world because I realized that life was limitless.

Like my father loved to live. He still was writing a book. He wasn't finished with life. And I felt like, man, life can just end at any moment. You never know.

And not only that, I felt like I was playing small. To the outside world, it probably seemed like I had made it. I had a great executive career at Disney. I was running all their email and mobile marketing. I had a top podcast.

You would think, oh, this girl's got it all. But to me, I was actually playing small. Like my whole life, I wanted to be a star. I wanted to be famous. And to make a huge impact on the world.

And so I realized I was playing too, too small. And so I finally got back to that 19-year-old Hala who was obsessed with the law of attraction and who really believed that you could create your dream life. And I got that fire back in my belly.

And Robert Green, who I also interviewed on my show, he's the author of the Laws of Human Nature and the 50th Laws of Power, Hugh Drother. And he taught me about the law of death denial. So in the law of death denial,

it says that most people are actually scared to confront the idea of death. They don't even think about it. They avoid the thought of death.

you should embrace the idea of death, think about your death

so that it actually motivates you to a life of purpose and fulfillment. And so my ask to everybody here today is not to wait until you're on your death bed, not to wait until somebody you love is on their death bed

to feel that fire in your belly and realize that life is limitless. Thank you. (audience applauding) - Guys, we have time for questions.

I just wanted to give you your present. - Hello, thank you. - You're amazing. - Thank you. - That's really good.

- Yeah, we have some time for questions. So I have a mic, so let's go to Brian. - Yeah, thanks, Hala. Good to get to know your personal story, rather than just you and I have interacted on Zoom

and a few side conversations, but it's great to hear the personal side. So thanks for sharing. Are you on a quest or a path? - A quest or a path?

You know, right now I feel like I don't know what my ultimate vision is, but I know that I'm focused on making a huge positive impact with the world and one of the things that I recently did was launch my podcast network,

which I'm super excited about, but I feel like there's another element to my life's purpose that I haven't discovered yet

“and I think it probably has to do with Palestine,”

but I feel like to be honest, I'm not ready yet to do that.

- So, 'cause I know you'd always think big

and execute big. If you could think five years into the future, what would you manifest? - You want me to answer that question? (laughs)

Well, I think, yeah, media is gonna be a thousand person company, 100%. I think I'm gonna have the biggest podcast network in the world and we're probably gonna be bought by Spotify or something like that.

And I think that at that point, I'll be so secure in my career that I can start really giving back and help educating people about some of the oppression and occupation and issues

that are going on in Palestine, that in this very juncture today, I can't do yet because I'm not successful enough to do that. - From your perspective, as the youngest person in the room,

what is the future of marketing? - The future of marketing. So, I don't think obviously social media is going away. I do think that platforms like Instagram and Twitter are definitely gonna fizzle out.

They're already losing their organic growth.

“I believe that social audio still hasn't found its footing”

and I believe that social audio will find its footing and that's gonna be huge. In terms of podcasting, I think it's gonna turn into VR and more of like a VR experience and that's definitely the future of podcasting.

And in general, I just think like the metaverse is gonna be the future of marketing and social media making sure that you're relevant in the metaverse and companies will have real estate in the real world and in the metaverse.

- Social audio? - So social audio, so there's these apps like clubhouse and green room and basically it's a type of technology or social app where it's just audio only, but it's very engaging.

And so there's usually like a stage where there's a panelist and then you can kind of bring up audience members and it's basically like an interactive podcast is that you can think of it. - Foundation that your dad was and what he did for everyone.

How's the family now? How's your mom? How's everybody doing? How's everybody coming together where now that your dad's past?

- Our family is doing amazing

'cause I feel like our dad left with such a strong foundation. So my mom's doing great. My brothers and sisters are all doctors super successful. We're super blessed, so everybody's doing great. Thanks for asking.

- I'm a little nervous to ask this question. So let me see if I can get it out. - Okay. - Your 12 year old little girl was being attacked by a country for being who you were.

And there are children in states right now that are trans children that are being attacked for being who they are. What do you wish rooms like this

“would have done for you when you were a little girl?”

When you were under attack. - That's a good question. - Wow, that's a good question. So like, let's just face it. I'm just gonna call it how it is.

Most of the people in this room are white, right? - White men. So I remember being a little Palestinian girl. Thinking I was just a regular American girl. And I remember having parents, friends.

They asked me, what's your heritage?

And I'd say, I'm from Palestine.

And literally multiple times, I've had parents say, Palestine doesn't exist. Imagine being a little girl and being told

“that your whole life is alive and you don't even exist, right?”

So one of the things that I would say is educate yourself, have some compassion. Educate yourself about what's really going on. And the other thing that I would say is for me, I'm in a really tricky place

because I've seen things with my own eyes. I feel a very certain way about it. But I've been canceled. I didn't tell you guys every story of my life. I've been canceled multiple times

for talking about Palestine. And so I'm like, you could ask Deris, I wasn't even going to mention it today. And he was like, he was like, you better mention it. I took it out of my speech because I was like,

I don't want to get canceled. Like, my career's taken off. I don't want anybody to hate me. Like, I love people. And I try to stay out of it because I understand

that I'm not powerful enough to talk about it yet.

But maybe some of you guys in this room are. And so I want to wait until I've got so much foundation that nobody can tear me down because I've been torn down before I've been shadowed band on Instagram. Like, I literally, one of the reasons why I blew up on LinkedIn

is because Instagram shadowed band me for so many years and nobody saw my stuff. And so I know what it's like to be canceled. And so what I'd ask is that, open your mind. Don't just look at the media.

Don't listen to the same stories that everybody told you. Like, there's stuff going on in the world

“that you need to learn about and do research about”

and listen to the people who are going through it. And then being advocate and stand up for them if you have the power and if you have the foundation where no one's going to tear you down. But there are people like me and people who are transgender

or Palestinian or whatever it is, whatever the minority group is who don't have the power to stand up for themselves and who will be canceled. And their life will be way more impacted than if you stood up for them.

And I know it's a hard thing to ask because people are scared to speak out because everybody's trying to protect their livelihood. But at some point, people need to stand up for what's right and equal human rights across the board for everyone.

(audience applauding) - Yeah, so I have a question. Thank you for your presentation as one of the non-weight male. - Guys, we're on my fucking NFT shirt. (audience laughing)

Actually, serious question. Have you ever thought of having your voice on the blockchain where it is actually senseless? Like you can't be canceled, so you can actually have your voice over there?

- Yeah, I mean, I've started to dabble in NFTs and getting involved. But I haven't figured out my master plan there yet,

“but I think that's a great opportunity for me to kind of speak out”

and not have as many as the risks as I would if I did it on Instagram or LinkedIn. So yeah, that sounds a good great idea. - I just said something, say happy birthday. - Thank you.

(audience applauding) - Yes, it is. - Yes, it is. - We can do a full-laden happy birthday. - Good morning.

- It was just. - But you know what I was saying? - Yeah, we got a thing at though. You know what? We're gonna say you a full-laden happy birthday.

- I don't wanna everybody. - Can I? - I don't wanna. - On three, one, two, three. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear halla. Happy birthday to you. - Thank you. (audience applauding) - Thank you.

- All right, is there any other questions for halla? - Oh, yeah. - Sure. - You know, being canceled and all over and over again, you were quit, people quit on you, and fired you. What was that thing that kept you going

and believing in yourself? - Honestly, it was my dad. It was knowing that my dad got out of poverty when all the odds were stuck against him. Like he was literally like his dad didn't even have

a first grade education and he went off to become like Chief of Surgery of Multiple Hospitals.

Like, and still for me, I always felt like I had zero

excuse to not be even 10 times more successful than he was. And so really it was always my dad thinking about like everything that he sacrificed 'cause all he did was study his whole life and all he did was give back his whole life.

His whole life was like for his family and dedicated for his family. So for me, that was always a driving factor to make sure that nothing he did was in vain and that I would help build my family's generational wealth

- Any other questions, Bill?

“- I'd like to say, yeah, yeah, I've liked it.”

That's about 15 minutes.

I'd probably not even see it either.

(laughing) - I'm a good team. (laughing)

“- She g offense the whole room and you all have in there too.”

- That's so funny. Thank you, guys. - All right, thank you. (audience applauding) - Thank you.

- Thank you. (upbeat music)