How to Build a Business That’ll Replace Your 9-5 | Hala Taha

19:04Nope.

19:04Hala Taha:So she was somebody who came on my podcast. She's a really big LinkedIn influencer. She was like a big speaker. She was like somebody who I wanted to be in like 10 years. What would happen when people would come on my show, it'd be like Chris Voss and like all these like famous authors and stuff. They'd be like, Hala, how'd you grow your LinkedIn? Hala, how'd you grow your podcast? and at the time I had 20 volunteers who worked for me. By episode eight, I had 20 volunteers in a Slack channel that was the start of my company who would just help me. So these people would ask me at the end of the show, like, can you help me?

19:33Hala Taha:Can you do my LinkedIn? Can you do my podcast? And I'd say like, I'm so sorry. Like, I've got a great job. This is just a passion project. You know, we're not making any money. Like, we're just doing this for the good of the people, you know, and that would always be my like, you know, script. Heather wouldn't leave me alone though. She asked me that question and she was like, Holly, you have to do my videos. Holly, you have to help me. Holly, I just met with Gary V's team. I could give him my money. I could give you my money. Like, you don't even like your job at Disney. Like, let me be your first client.

20:01Hala Taha:And so when my dad was sick, she was like a mentor to me and she really pushed me to like start my company. And so she became my first client. I started doing all her videos using my volunteer team. And then I just piecemeal started building my company. I I learned how to do full LinkedIn for myself. I started running that for other people. I learned how to produce podcasts. I started producing other people's podcasts. I learned how to monetize podcasts. I then launched my podcast network. So my company took off right away and I did it as a side hustle while working at Disney. I had 30 employees around the world, already US full-time employees and still worked at Disney.

20:40Hala Taha:And I was making over six figures a month. And then I finally quit my job at Disney. Once I did that, I got on the cover of Podcast Magazine. My podcast grew even bigger because really my LinkedIn grew first, then my agency, then my podcast blew up. And then two years ago, I started my podcast network. Now we're the number one self-improvement podcast network. We represent 35 other shows like Jenna Kutcher, Russell Brunson, Amy Porterfield, John Lee Dumas, Ice Coffee Hour, and lots of other awesome shows. One thing that's been striking me as the story has been going is just how fundamentally different you and I and you and Mindy are in a general sense.

21:15We talked about this a little bit when I was when I was a guest on your show as well. But, you know, I think like the thought of somebody doing a reality TV show on my life is just preposterous. Like nobody would watch that. Right. Mindy, how would it go for you if someone were to turn on the reality TV show for you?

21:32Mindy Jensen:The Rich and the Boring with Mindy Jensen. Your story is you imagine that there's just exciting, like really crazy things going on the entire way through. Tons of famous people that you're meeting, all of these really cool events that you're doing there. I'm wondering how your money situation evolved over this time period.

21:50Hala Taha:Oh, this is such a good question. I'm sitting here, like my day, I'm getting up, I work out, Zoom meetings, you know, hang out with my family, something different's going on there. And I'm accumulating a lot of cash. Are you able to accumulate cash during this period? Yeah, such a good question. I mean, I can just like go back because like the amount of money that I make now is like insane compared like and it's all this like compounding effect and like sacrifice. Right. So at the station working at Hot 97, didn't get paid during the daytime, made money at night, probably made like a thousand bucks a week if I was lucky.

22:22Hala Taha:Maybe like doing this showcase stuff at night Maybe even less Maybe even less Probably like 500 bucks a week if I'm thinking about it So I was making nothing at Hot 97 during that time period My first job when I graduated college Before I took my MBA I didn't talk about it I worked at a water company I made$27 ,000 a year living in New York City That is a terrible salary, okay? I hated that job I smoked cigarettes at lunch during that job I've never smoked cigarettes in my life and like that's how much everybody hated their job. We would just like smoke cigarettes at lunch. It was terrible, okay?

22:56Hala Taha:$27 ,000 a year. Then I got my MBA. Now that was a huge jump. My MBA internship was 90K a year, okay? Then I got promoted and I ended up probably making 150K a year by the time I was at the end of Hewlett-Packard. Could you give us one thing I think we've missed on this is the timeline here. When did you graduate college and begin, or when did you go into the intern program? Excuse me. And when did you, What year were you starting to make this$150 ,000 or so? My college journey is so messed up because I had dropped out of school. So I would say I started Hewlett-Packard in like 2014 and I left in like 2019.

23:33Hala Taha:Okay. So 2014, I started making$90 ,000 a year. By the end of that, I was making like$150 ,000 a year. I left Disney because they gave me a bump. So I started making like$170 ,000. It wasn't even that huge of a jump. I just wanted to leave Hewlett-Packard. So I had a good job, like by all standards at Disney streaming services. I was a smart girl, you know, and like able to produce, right? So I was making good money. So like once I had the podcast, okay, when I quit my job, I started paying myself a salary of just$60 ,000 a year. So I actually took less money out of the business so that I could hire people and things like that.

24:12Hala Taha:Then I started getting sponsorships from my podcast and I used my sponsorships to bootstrap my company. I have been doing my podcast, which has been a top podcast for like seven years. I've been monetizing it for five years. I've only started taking my sponsorship money for the last two years. Now my salary is like$400 ,000 a year. Fast forward to today. And my podcast makes a million dollars a year and I take 50 % payouts. It's almost about a million dollars a year cash for my salary with my sponsorships and my salary. My podcast really is what enabled me to fund this entire business and never take, and I own, still own like 95 % of the company.

24:54Going back just a step before this, before this explosion of income and the very successful business that you built, were you able to accumulate cash or build wealth on this journey prior to that? And how did that translate to taking that leap, the comfort with going from$175 or whatever at Disney to$160?

25:13Hala Taha:When I quit my job, I had about$100 ,000 saved. I had about maybe$50 ,000 or so in stocks. once COVID hit and the stocks were like, you know, crashing, I sold my stocks like an idiot, took that money out, use that for more bootstrapping of my company. And so for a long time, for like two years, when I first started building my company, I couldn't save any money because I just kept pumping money back into the business. And I decided I'd rather pump money back into my business and invest in myself rather than save because I thought that I'd make more than, you know, 5 % putting in a high yield savings fund if I just bet on my business, which turned out, I think to be true.

25:51Hala Taha:So last year, my business made seven and a half million dollars. My podcast made a million dollars. And this year we're on track for eight figures. It was a long journey though, because I slowly started giving myself more salary, but things really didn't change until I like was like, okay guys, I'm like going to take a payout now from my podcast and start really paying myself. Well, awesome. Congratulations on those enormous numbers. Love it. Thank you. I'm sure you guys are crushing it on your podcast, You know, podcasts make money. No eight figures here at BP Money. Oh, let me help. How could you personally turn your side hustle into a business?

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28:14Mindy Jensen:Thanks for sticking with us. You said you had$100 ,000 saved up before you left your job. Was that for bootstrapping the business or was that just for living expenses?

28:24Hala Taha:All my living expenses, I covered with the money that I made from the company. And the$100 ,000 was like, I can't have less than this or I'll feel like insecure. So that$100 ,000 was just like my money. And I also had 401ks. So I'm not including that. So I had 401ks from both HP and Disney, which was like another like hundred grand or so. And like those two things were that was like my nest egg. And like I just wouldn't touch it. And then everything else I just invested back into the business.

28:50Mindy Jensen:Have you gone back to see how much those stocks would be worth now if you didn't sell them? No. Don't. They would be worth so much more. But she made the right call. There's no way that they would compete with what she just discussed there.

29:03Hala Taha:I made the wrong call with crypto, though, because my second and third episodes in 2018 were like literally I spent three months just learning because crypto was so new back then. And then I didn't invest in anything, even though I was like studying it for three months, which I'm kicking myself for that because a lot of people got really rich from that.

29:22Mindy Jensen:You don't have to use crypto to grow your wealth. I am a very vocal non-fan of crypto. The first time I heard about Bitcoin was way back when Greece was having a lot of financial turmoil in their country. And it was$6 ,000. And I'm like, who'd pay$6 ,000 for some fake thing? And now it's a little bit more.

29:40Hala Taha:Well, there's a lot of them in Austin. And I think that's why in Austin, there's so many crypto people. I'm like, oh, my God, like these people are so filthy rich. Not just Austin. Now that you are earning an elite income and have a very successful business, I think you said five years ago. Was it five years ago that you started the business in earnest and really went full time into it? Yeah. What is your investment portfolio look like just in the way it's shaped? What are you investing in and what are you building towards with your investment portfolio outside of the business? Well, I'm still heavily invested in my business.

30:14Hala Taha:I invest in stocks and I usually invest in technology stocks. So like the stocks that I usually focus on are like Google, Meta, NVIDIA, like AI stocks. and I really just put all my money, Tesla, like in kind of technology stocks and I don't look at anything else because they've done really well for me. I put all my cash in high yield savings accounts. I've still got my 401ks. I probably should consolidate them from my corporate jobs. I still have those floating around. And then now I'm getting into real estate. So I am sponsored by Airbnb and I wanna start Airbnb. So I'm starting with buying my own place, condo, And in the same building, I'm buying another condo that I'm going to be using as a studio and more as like an experiential Airbnb that I'll also probably rent out.

31:02Hala Taha:So pretty excited about that. And then I'm just going to keep buying condos and houses, I think, and run Airbnbs so long as I can find somebody else to do all the work for it. Well, I love it. We talked about this briefly on your show, and I didn't realize that Airbnb was a component of that strategy. So I love it. it's definitely a much better time to get into Airbnb now than it was two or three years ago when it was boiling hot in the industry. And there's a lot of, I think there's opportunity for, especially for those who are willing to make the experiential plays like you are and treat it like a business.

31:31Hala Taha:Yeah. I'm really excited about that. Honestly, I feel like it will like satisfy an itch that I haven't been able to really do. It feels really creative. Another question for you on this topic. First, what is your approach to cash management, both personally and in your business? I have observed, for example, that entrepreneurs tend to pile up a lot more cash between their personal and business than many other people. But is that true for you specifically? The way that we handle it is that we've got our company and then it pays my LLC. And so I like to keep cash in the company at least three to six months runway of everybody's salaries.

32:05Hala Taha:And so I don't take a ton of cash out of the business. The way that I generate my cash, I think, is really unique. I just get such so much money from my podcast ads. And like that is like the big cash that I kind of take out of the business. So I don't know if that answers your question or if there's something more specific you're wondering about. Sounds like you have three to six months of cash in the business. And then you also have personal cash that you consider separately from that, which amounts to, I'm sure, a very large overall cash position. Very conservative. Do you put debt on your business?

32:31Hala Taha:No, we don't take any debt. We're very much believers in bootstrapping. we might start like apply to have the option to take out debt. Like if we needed, you know, an emergency$50 ,000 or something so that we can start taking more distributions and feeling comfortable having less money in the company. But I don't really want to do that. I feel like we don't need to. And so I prefer not to do that. What advice would you give to somebody who's listening to this, who's entrepreneurial, who's got a business that's, you know, they think could be in the world of realm of yours from cash generation in a few years, how should they think about their overall investment portfolio, perhaps compared to a typical W-2 worker?

33:11Hala Taha:My advice is to sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, right? You've got to figure out how you can sell at the highest price point in the market, how you can arbitrage talent so that you don't have a lot of expenses. And that's how you generate cash. And I'm saying this because I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't think enough about their business model. They don't think enough about the fact that like the lifeblood of any business is actually sales. And almost every problem that a business will have, cash flow, not good enough talent, no market demand, that's all from not being able to sell.

33:48Hala Taha:And so I think problem number one that you need to focus on before you even care about the cash that you're accumulating is, can you make sales? Can you charge high prices? Can you find an audience that is willing to pay? Or can you find volume? You know, it's either volume or high prices and like a really exclusive type of audience. So I feel like that's what you really need to focus on. And then all the other stuff kind of comes naturally, rather than worrying about how much cash you should have without thinking about what are you selling? Awesome. And what advice would you give to somebody who are an entrepreneur about their personal portfolio?

34:20In addition to, I think part of the answer I think you just gave is selling in your business is so much more important than anything you're doing in your personal portfolio. That's really where the focus needs to lie. I think it's what I'm reading from that answer. I think that's absolutely right for most entrepreneurs. But I am curious if you have any thoughts on the personal finance component for those entrepreneurs of the cash that they are distributing from the business.

34:42Hala Taha:I would say that make sure that you're not having like a bunch of cash. I know when you're focused on your business, sometimes you don't focus as an entrepreneur on your personal side. You're so worried about the business that you're not even focused on building your own personal assets and things like that. So I would advise you to pull out money. I wish I pulled out money earlier from my company and I feel like I waited too late and like I didn't reward myself early enough, right? So pull out your money. I like stocks, you know, put it in stocks that you believe, like products that you use yourself, right?

35:13Hala Taha:And that you know for sure, like have product market fit because you love them, right? Put all your cash in a high yield savings account. Don't let it just like sit. I can't tell you how long I had my cash sitting in a Bank of America account that was making no percent on my money for a long time. That 100K never grew because I never took it out of my account that I had since I was 18 years old, right? So make sure you move your money. It takes an hour to figure out, right? So don't overthink it. And then follow bigger pockets and things like that if you wanna learn about real estate. I took a long time to really invest in anything else because like I said, I was investing in myself and to me, one of my assets is my brand.

35:57Hala Taha:And so I continually invested back into my brand and into my podcast. The way that podcasts work is that you basically get paid proportionally to how many views and downloads you have. So anytime I had like 10 extra K, I would just put that straight into my podcast because I knew I'd make like four times ROI on that money as soon as I put it in and I had proved that out, right? So that's what I did. I took all my money and I invested it back into my show, back into my brand. Love it. And I think that's the answer is just invest it back into your business. If you're truly an entrepreneur on this front for the most part, because that's going to provide much, much higher ROI.

36:32And again, I just love this chat because we're so fundamentally different in the way that we view money. And there's so many paths to winning in the world of personal finance and money. And it's just, of course, I'm CEO of BiggerPockets this whole time. And I'm thinking, how do I build my personal portfolio in addition to the business? But I I think it's just an interesting perspective from you as the founder and owner of your business.

36:56Hala Taha:Yeah. And I don't think there's a right answer. I think it's like your risk for appetite and, you know, what feels natural for you. For me, just selling feels natural and building something as big as possible feels natural. And, you know, the rewards came. So good for us.

37:10Mindy Jensen:So Hala, I have a question. You are super successful in your business, but it seems like you are a driving factor with your business. Do you have an exit strategy for the business?

37:23Hala Taha:I'm not thinking that we're going to exit for a while. And I've talked a lot about myself, but I do have two amazing partners. One of them I'm working on a vesting agreement with. His name is Jason. One is Kate, who runs my social media agency. They're basically homegrown executives that have been with me for many years. Kate was actually part of that volunteer group from back in the day. I see them kind of scaling and helping me build the company. maybe one day Jason will be CEO and I'll step down as CEO and start a family and things like that. And I see that definitely happening in our future.

37:56Hala Taha:We want to grow the company to$100 million valuation. That's the goal in the next three years. And so if we end up selling, you know, that's the path we would take. We're kind of working with lawyers to make sure that our company is set up for success for a sale down the line. But for me, I would be happy running a$30 million company forever. I love this job. I don't think I'll ever quit my podcast. So for me, it's not so much about selling it down the line, but about growing it as big as possible. And if a sale happens and we feel good about it, we'll do it. Awesome. Holly, you mentioned you have a podcast, but very few podcasts alone generate eight figures in revenue, right?

38:32I mean, like you talk about Joe Rogan and those types of things. What is it that your business actually does to generate this eight figures in revenue?

38:39Hala Taha:So I have two sides of the business. I have a social media and podcast production agency where we run people's LinkedIn, their podcast, their YouTube. Now, this is like a talent heavy focused part of the business. It is not something that we're really interested in scaling. We've got like 20 very high profile clients. They do like retainers that start for anywhere from 10K to 30K a month. And it's like a very white glove service for like typically eight figure entrepreneurs, big influencers. and we run their social accounts, okay? So that's one side of the business that we're not really trying to scale.

39:13Hala Taha:We're totally focused on scaling the network. So the network is basically where we grow and monetize other podcasters. And so I'm actually not the biggest podcaster in my network. I probably still make the most money out of everybody right now, but like there's close seconds. But like we just signed, for example, Ice Coffee Hour, which is a bigger show than mine. And so we signed Ice Coffee Hour. We've got Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, Russell Brunson. and we've got all these amazing podcasters. And my job is to grow and monetize their show. And we take a rev share. It's 70-30. We take 30 % of everyone's sponsorships.

39:46Hala Taha:And we do all the selling, the ad ops, the flighting. And we don't only sell podcast ads. We also sell creative campaigns. So paid interviews, miniseries, sponsored webinars, live events, virtual events. We're now selling for Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi's monthly mastermind, getting them sponsorships, right? You can almost think of us as an influencer marketing company that really caters to podcasters. So we basically flight everybody's ads, do all the ad ops, do all the sales, that side of it. And then we just take a rev share. The other thing that I do is I try to grow my network. So I'm like, you know, putting everybody in growth programs, trying to grow everybody's simulcast, doing all these like testing programs, helping people rank on Apple and Spotify so they can get organic traction, PSO, podcast search optimization.

40:34Hala Taha:And so like my two main jobs is just sell. All my shows are sold out for the entire year. For example, we do an awesome job selling and growing our shows. So that's really our main focus and scaling that out and just recruiting more and more big podcasts. Well, that sounds like a very scalable business that would be exit ready at some point in the future. And there it sounds like it is not about you. You're just the face of one of those podcasts. And what a wonderful business model. You've done a great job with this. So congratulations. Thank you.

41:03Mindy Jensen:Hala, this has been so much fun.

41:06Hala Taha:Where can people find you online? Yeah, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you guys for having me. Well, first off, I've got the Young and Profiting podcast. We interview the brightest minds in the world. So I've interviewed people like Damon John, Alex Ramosi, Matthew McConaughey. It's an amazing show. Go check it out, Young and Profiting. If you want to find out about the network or the social agency, it's yapmedia.com, yapmedia.com. Thank you so much for having me on your show. and then coming back here on the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. It has been a real privilege to meet you and chat with you these last couple of hours and look forward to sharing your story.

41:41Hala Taha:Yeah, likewise. It was such a pleasure.

41:42Mindy Jensen:Thank you, guys. Thank you, Hala. And we'll talk to you soon. All right, that was Hala Taha. Scott, what'd you think of the show? I loved it. I mean, I think that a lot of people probably are listening to this on BiggerPocketsMoney and being like, well, hey, I'm working my job or I got my small business and I'm steadily marching toward FI and I'm in that grind. And, you know, folks like Hala come along and just kind of totally wash away and send to the side this notion of the grind. Do not do any of the serious hardcore saving or investing and then build a thriving business. And I think that it's really important to be reminded of these different types of journeys here because there are no hard and fast rules in finance at the end of the day.

42:20And entrepreneurship and successful business building can obviate the need for tons of these other components of a financial journey if you're wired for an entrepreneurial like that. I also thought it was really funny because as parts of the journey, I respected Apollo's journey so much. And I just find it so funny how, you know, I just cannot relate to anyone ever wanting to do an MTV show about my life. And I think Mindy feels the same way here.

42:44Mindy Jensen:100%. It's so different. It's just like, it's not a worldview that I'm even able to like contemplate. I just like, it's so ridiculous to envision someone coming into our house and trying to film a day in my life and people thinking this is exciting in some way. So it's just, that's just not the way I do it and not the way that I think a lot of folks do it, but there are so many people out there who that is for, and there are so many ways to use a personality, a skillset, a charisma like Hala has to create those types of opportunities. So great for her, really learned a lot here, and I think it's just a really good reminder of the differences that people have, and you can have that, and 10, 15 years can go by, and it can look like you're not getting ahead financially, and then poof, explosion from your business.

43:24There's always opportunities out there.

43:25Mindy Jensen:Hey, MTV, if you ever want to produce what would absolutely be the lowest rated show you've ever done, hit me up, Mindy at BiggerPocketsMoney.com. Mindy becomes millionaire over 25 years of frugal saving and lifestyle design. And instant success overnight in just 25 short years. Half a percent a month for 25 years, you know. Scott, one thing Hala said that I absolutely loved was, I turned my problem into my next business. And I think this is where a lot of really successful ideas come from. Are you interested in entrepreneurship? What is a problem that you have and how can you solve it? Because if you're having that problem, I can almost guarantee lots of other people are having that problem too.

44:06Mindy Jensen:So I love that that was her mindset. It wasn't, oh, poor me. It was, how can I fix this problem? I think that it's also just this component. Like I think some people, you know, like everyone's going to have rough patches along their journey. Like, I don't know of anybody who had a 30-year career of just straight-up success the entire way through without interruption in there. And it's how you respond to those setbacks that's really important. And you can't respond by being despondent for months and months or weeks and weeks after a setback. It's got to be, you know, that sucks. I'm going to, you know, take the night, maybe the weekend, and think about it.

44:38And I'm back to work on Monday or, better yet, Sunday, getting after the next opportunity, whether that's getting my resume ready, getting a business plan ready, or otherwise just jumping on something and moving forward. That's the characteristic that has defined Hala's journey that clearly has led to the explosion eventually of her business here.

44:55Mindy Jensen:Yep, absolutely. One other observation I want to make about Hala's journey is I thought it was fascinating when I asked her about her investment portfolio. What do you invest in? And she didn't even register the question about her financial portfolio. It was in sales, of course, and growing my business. We spend all this time on BiggerPocketsMoney obsessing over the personal portfolio and the accumulation of wealth to build a FIRE portfolio. And she didn't even really get the question from it. That's really fascinating. And I don't think that's going to be that uncommon among a lot of serious hardcore entrepreneurs out there.

45:29And that's something to consider. You know, how does that impact the way we think about a portfolio that's smart for an entrepreneur? Is it a very low risk, high cash position? Because it's not even really on your brain, or maybe it shouldn't be because you're building a business. Of course, all the extra cash is going into the business in there. I thought that was a fascinating response from a true entrepreneur into that question around portfolio building.

45:51Mindy Jensen:That was. Yeah, I really liked that answer for her. She's investing in herself. She's investing in her business. And that's how you grow. That is the difference between somebody who is making, what is it, eight, 10 figures? and somebody who isn't. And is it better risk-adjusted investing for Hala and many entrepreneurs and folks like her than what we talk about all day on BiggerPocketsMoney? Again, I just found it a fascinating glimpse into a really different mind and entrepreneurial journey. Absolutely a different mindset, but entrepreneurs need to have a different mindset. All right, Scott, should we get out of here?

46:24Let's do it.

46:25Mindy Jensen:That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen saying, catch you later, elevator.