Courtney Johnson: Career Cheat Codes to Stand Out, Get Promoted, and Win at Work | Career | E395

21:01Hala Taha:And I just love how Quo's AI logs the calls and then summarizes conversations automatically so that nothing falls through the cracks. That means your business stays responsive even when you're offline. And now we use Quo very creatively at Yap Media on the social and production side of our agency. We have really busy, super high-profile clients that don't want to log into Slack. Their team communicates with my team in Slack, but if a high-profile client wants to message our team directly, they can use Quo and my team can monitor that inbox together. So they can text at any time. It's basically like a high-profile client hotline.

21:36Hala Taha:And that's just one idea. You can use Quo in really creative ways to level up your business, no matter what type of business you have. Make the season where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free, plus get 20 % off your first six months when you go to quo.com slash profiting. That's Q-U-O.com slash profiting. Quo, no missed calls, no missed customers. You give such cute hacks in the book. One of them is the snackable surprises for your boss. I love that hack. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, this is fun because, you know, we have this, there's this concept of like iterative wins or iterative surprises, right?

22:15Where if I brought donuts to work in every single day, you would start to expect it from me. But if I bring in fun little surprises ad hoc, you become more addictive as a person. This is actually how toxic relationships work, but we're just using it for good. So for your coworkers, bring in a little surprise, offer to help somebody, offer to help your boss take something off of their plate. But if you don't want to be held to it, do it a little bit more intermediately rather than consistently. But you want to consistently give your boss to them Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

22:53Hala Taha:Got it. So in terms of these snackable surprises, from my understanding, it was basically like surprise them with like information or something that can help them that they just weren't expecting. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, this can also be information. This can be, again, something like, I think you would love this article. It could be, again, something like you go to a conference or you attend a webinar that they don't know about and you send them what you learned from it or the three actions that you're taking. Again, it's really being proactive and going above and beyond. Something else I think is super helpful is there is a, I think it's a 1 % rule or 10 % rule.

23:29You just want to go like a tiny percent above what everybody else is doing. So if your boss asks you to do a report, do a report and tell them the three predictions for the next report. If your boss asks you to make a pitch deck, do the pitch deck and draft the pitch deck email. Like how can you anticipate and take one extra micro step above everybody else that's really gonna make you stand out? And that also will make you stand out in interviewers. So for all the entrepreneurs listening to this of like, how do I hire an A player? Look out for these things in the interview. Are they going one extra step in the job application process?

24:07Did they, you know, email you after to thank you? Did they send you a quick video? Did they share with you three changes they would make or a high level of a 30-60-90 plan? Those are the people we really want to hire because those are the people that are going even just one tiny step above and beyond.

24:24Hala Taha:As I was learning about some of these strategies, I kept thinking about my own journey as an entrepreneur. And when I heard about this snackable surprises, I realized this is what I do to get mentors now. This is what I do to get really high level clients because people who join my network have to have like a certain amount of downloads. They're typically like really famous and I've got to like stand out and impress them somehow. And so what I'll do is just like try to be helpful and not in annoying, like spammy way, but like if I have a piece of information that they could, you know, really use or implement, I'll like, you know, shoot a loom video and like send it to them.

25:01Hala Taha:And until finally, like they want to have a call with me or they realize that I've got value to share. And so you can also use this strategy to get clients and mentors as an entrepreneur. Totally. Like introductions is a great way to do this of, hey, I would love, like for a couple of people, I've been like, hey, I would love to introduce you to my book agent. I know that'd be really valuable for them. That would deepen the relationship. It could be, hey, I have an extra ticket to this conference. Like, do you want to go? I'll give you this ticket for free. I love the information. I actually had somebody use this on me last week.

25:32They were like, it was somebody that worked at LinkedIn. They said, hey, Courtney, here are three things that are kind of under the radar that I've learned. Like I would love to come guest speak and they want to guest speak. And the way that they're putting their foot in the door is telling me these like kind of three bits of insider information that only they would know, which is really, really cool. So yeah, I love that. I love implementing information as a leverage point and as value that you're giving, tidbits of value.

26:02Hala Taha:So you were just mentioning the hiring process. For somebody who's looking for a job, What do they need to know about how hiring works today in 2026? Yeah, right now, the hiring process, the hiring landscape is completely different than it looked even one year ago with AI, with massive layoffs. I mean, it is competitive and it is wild. A couple of things I would want somebody to know if they were applying to a job right now. First, your volume has to be higher than you think. A lot of people come to me, Courtney, I'm trying, I'm applying and applying and applying, and I haven't gotten any interviews.

26:42And I ask them, how many jobs have you applied for? They might say, oh, 10, 15. It's going to take a lot more than that. It's going to take 100, 200. Second, you want to make sure that you're working with recruiters and that you're connected with a bunch of recruiters on LinkedIn. So I actually tell my clients they are not allowed to complain about not having a job unless they're connected to 200 recruiters on their LinkedIn. And people say, oh, but Courtney, my inbox is going to be annoying. I hope your inbox is annoying. Yeah, that's the point. Yeah, that's the point. Like, I hope all these people are fighting to place you.

27:16So you want to make sure that you are connected with a fuckton of recruiters. Next, you want to make sure you're always going one step above and beyond. So you're sending them an extra message, an extra video. You're sending them some things that you would implement or change. And the biggest tip to getting a job as easy and fast as possible is to build a personal brand. Yes. The simplest way to do this is just post on LinkedIn. Start posting on LinkedIn weekly. It's going to put you above every single other person that's competing for that job because they're glancing at your LinkedIn profile for maybe a second.

27:55Yeah. If it looks really professional, if you look like a thought leader, you look like you're educating others, you post consistently, you're immediately going to gain higher favor. Because I have what I call a three-second test on LinkedIn, and it's really like a one-second test. If you just glance at your profile for a couple of seconds, what are people thinking? It's not even what they're thinking. It's what is the unconscious biases that start to come out? And I use the word bias as a neutral term because it could be something like, oh, you have speaker in your bio. and in my mind, speaker has positive attributes and it sounds like you're really qualified.

28:27So I see speaker, the bias is, oh, you're probably really qualified, right? Or it might be more negative. I might see polka dots on your shirt and you're wearing a college graduation cap. So I assume my bias is, oh, you're young and inexperienced. So you also want to make sure that your profile is reflecting the positive biases that if somebody just glances at your profile, they're taking away things that are going to support that hiring decision. And then once you start posting, opportunities are going to come to you. So few people do it and so few people stay consistent with it that if you are posting consistently, it is going to make you stand out.

29:03Again, if you're connected, if you have 200 recruiters in your network, you're posting once a week and they're seeing those posts, their unconscious bias is, oh, this person is going to be really easy to place. Yeah. Like they're hardworking. They're going above and beyond. Like I'm going to go out of my way for them.

29:18Hala Taha:Yeah. And either way, if you don't end up getting a job, your personal brand can help you, you know, become an entrepreneur. So either way, you've got to leverage your personal brand, I think, to get a job or to become an entrepreneur. And I feel like a lot of people in corporate, they're kind of scared of creating a personal brand. They feel like because they're in corporate, they don't need one or they even might get in trouble for starting one. Talk to us about why it's so important to build a personal brand, whether you're in corporate and you've got a stable job or you're looking for a job?

29:49Yeah, this is so important. I get the question a lot. I'm in corporate, but I feel weird because what is my boss going to say about me posting on LinkedIn? Or what if I get fired for posting on LinkedIn? There is a lot of fear that comes up around this. But the truth is the odds that you're going to be at that company forever are very, very, very small. So even if something does go wrong, were you going to stay there forever? Probably not. The best way to avoid any negativity from you posting on LinkedIn, one, block the people that you're afraid of seeing your stuff. Like it's that simple. You can block people.

30:25Second, share your mission with your team. So if you're a little afraid of what your boss is going to think, figure out what your underlying mission is and share that with them. For example, Hala, you're my boss. Hala, I just wanted to let you know, like I started posting on LinkedIn. I'm really excited because first, I think it's really going to help us get more visibility into XYZ product. But two, it's always been my passion to inspire young women. And my posts are like my intention for my post is to inspire more young women to go into engineering. What are you going to say? Oh, you can't inspire young women?

30:59Yeah, of course not. If you position it in a way that's sharing that your intention is to elevate the whole company, not just you, and to inspire some group of people, I've never seen that not work because they don't want to look like an asshole.

31:13Hala Taha:Yeah, and you will actually become more valuable because you're gaining new skills. So let's say like you're in finance, but now you're dabbling in marketing on LinkedIn. And now suddenly you're good at marketing and writing and your boss or your company can find more opportunities for you. Totally. I remember when I started working at HP. That's when I started posting on LinkedIn. And I became a big influencer and I became more popular than the CEO at HP. I love that. And then suddenly they were like, go to every conference, you know, interview the CEO at the town halls. Can you help train our sales team on LinkedIn?

31:49Hala Taha:And I was actually getting more opportunities because I was posting on LinkedIn. And at first it was really my peers, my co-workers were like, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing that? But all the executives actually loved it and thought that it was a strength that I was posting on LinkedIn. So I also think there's some benefits to it that people don't necessarily like realize right at first. Maybe at first there'll be pushback, but if you actually start to gain traction, you become more valuable. And also you become more visible to other companies who might poach you for a higher salary or something like that.

32:23Totally. Yeah. I think as long as you're getting ahead of the narrative and then again, sharing those wins. So, hey, a customer DM'd me on LinkedIn and they said they really, really like this feature. That's so cool, right? Like even these little breadcrumbs of positivity, again, just in the same way we're like, we're shifting the narrative and we're controlling the narrative of our customers by sharing wins with them. We're going to do that internally and we're going to share with our boss. We're going to share in our company, Wins Channel, even these tiny things. As simple as a customer commenting on your LinkedIn post.

32:53A narrative there is simply, look, I'm fostering relationships with our customers. Like I'm using this as an additional touch point. and we know the more touch points we have with our customers, the longer they retain or whatever it might be. And then also I would make sure that you have a good mix of things about your company, but also things about you. So you were probably talking about HP, but you were also talking about the mentorship you were getting, the books that you were reading, like things outside of that one job, because you definitely don't want to be pinned down to one specific job if you're not going to stay there forever.

33:27I totally agree.

33:28Hala Taha:Now, something that's not so obvious to people, especially people who haven't built a personal brand before or haven't spent a lot of time with algorithms, is that keywords really, you know, are a big part of strategy online, even a big part of resume strategy. So help us understand why keywords play such a big part of getting your resume found and then also how that translates to being an entrepreneur and starting an online brand. Totally. Well, both in our resume and in our content, we have AI algorithms that are picking up certain keywords. So if you're really into baking, it's picking up keywords around recipe, around healthy eating, around whatever, in order to feed it to you because the algorithms want to feed you content of what you like.

34:14So we just want to make sure that our resumes are very keyword rich in whatever job we're searching for. So let's say I'm a general marketer. I'm going to apply to a social media job over here, and I'm going to apply to an email marketing job over here. I'm definitely going to want to shift my resume a little bit and have more social media keywords over here for the social media job or more email marketing keywords over here for the email marketing job. And you can use AI to do this. You can put your resume in ChatGPT, whatever your favorite AI is and say, hey, can you help me optimize this for this specific job?

34:50One of my favorite things to do is just take that job description, copy it, put it into AI, put it into ChatGPT, and ask Chat how to optimize your resume tailored to that specific job application. There's so many tools and resources to optimize your resume. I used to do this manually for hundreds of job applications, I'm so happy that you can do this on your own. You can do this automatically. And then as far as building our personal brands, same thing. We can ask our friendly AIs what keywords to sprinkle into our content. Although I find it happens really automatically. Like if you're talking about software engineering, you're probably naturally going to bring up a lot of keywords that people are already consuming and already searching.

35:37I would say it's more strategic on your resume.

35:41Hala Taha:Yeah. On LinkedIn, the algorithm is so like straightforward where basically like every user has two clouds. One cloud is their like interest, their profile, the keywords that's found in their profile and their content. And then one cloud is like the stuff they engage on. And so the algorithm is just matching people like, okay, what does this person engage on and who talks about that? And it just matches each other. So want to make sure is in your title, your bio, your description, even your description of the past jobs that you've had on LinkedIn, right? All that metadata is fed to the algorithm and then they'll know, the algorithm will know like you're an expert in XYZ and creates a keyword cloud for you.

36:22Hala Taha:So I feel like if people just understood that they could get so much further on LinkedIn. Yeah. It's also important to remember that just because your company has this like crazy word for your job title, that might not work on your resume, right? If your job, like I've worked at some startups where the social media manager is like the social media guru, like, I don't know, there's some bullshit names. Like you want to make sure you have a standard job title or elevate it a little bit. Like if you worked in, you know, if you worked as a waitress, maybe you're not writing waitress. Maybe you're writing like hospitality associate or something.

37:02Yeah, Yeah, totally.

37:04Hala Taha:So what do you think about imposter syndrome? You know, this is like a hot topic. Everybody, you know, talks about imposter syndrome. What's your take on it? Yeah. So imposter syndrome is when we feel like we're not qualified enough or we don't have all of the information that we need to do a certain task or to do a certain role or get a certain opportunity. And the truth is we are literally cyborgs. Like we have all of the world's information at the tip of our fingers. And right now in job applications, in career, in entrepreneurship, you do not have to know everything. You just have to be able to figure out the problem.

37:40Like problem solving is the most important skill, not you know, you already have memorized how to do this thing. Like that's so silly. So to what I would say to people dealing with imposter syndrome is you don't have to know the answer. You just have to know how to figure it out.

37:58Hala Taha:And in terms of getting a raise, how do you suggest that people approach getting a raise in their job? Yeah, when you want to get a raise, you really need to understand the value that you bring to the company. So most of the times, you're either making the company more money or you're saving the company money. If you're not doing one of those things, you probably wouldn't have a job. And you might think, well, I work in this other department that doesn't have any revenue attached No, everything has revenue attached to it. Or you would not work there. Maybe you're saving the money because you're mitigating some risk.

38:29Or maybe you're bringing in money, you're bringing in users, etc. Yeah, retaining clients. Retaining clients, exactly. So the first thing is really understanding whether you're making the company money or saving the company money. And then starting to quantify that. You can just have a conversation with ChatGPT and say, hey, here's my role. Here's what I've done. Can you help me understand how I'm saving or making the company money? and you want to really have a raised conversation of tying it back into the money because honestly, nothing else really matters. We think like, oh, well, the client said this nice thing about me and I accomplished this and I worked for this long and I went above and beyond in these ways.

39:07And although that's all great and shows you have a great work ethic, what your company wants to know is a client gave me this compliment and that led to them retaining, which led to an extra$100 ,000, whatever. Or, you know, I, instead of taking six months to hire someone as an HR professional, I took three months. That cut our time to hire in half, which time to hire, you know, it really costs us an extra $10 ,000 a month. So I saved us$30 ,000. Like you want to really find areas. And again, I coach people on this and they might say, well, there's, there's no way, like I didn't do anything to make or save the company money.

39:46And you absolutely did, or you would be fired.

39:49Hala Taha:Yeah. I love that. Such great tips. So you wrote this book, Career Cheat Codes. Why do you feel so passionate about this topic? You also like blew up on TikTok initially talking about careers. Why do you feel so passionate about this topic? I feel so passionate because it took me a long time to understand these cheat codes, and I had to figure it out for myself. And I want other people to have a shortcut to where they don't have to go through so many ups and downs and so many problems in their career. They just understand the information and they can go. And I think of this as information equity.

40:21I think we talk about a lot of different types of equity and equality in our world, how to make the world more equitable. We talk about it in terms of money, in terms of where we come from, et cetera. And the type of equality I've just been really passionate about is information equality. Because I have seen so many stories where somebody comes from a really rough background. Somebody comes without having access to some of these job opportunities, etc. And they can work their way up just by having the information. One of my good friends, she is from the Philippines. And she's from like a very small village where the average salary is like$200 a year.

41:00And she just through watching YouTube videos, she learned how to be a VA, eventually made her own VA agency. Now she has a seven-figure business. She travels the world. She's literally living her dream. Because of information equity. Because somebody decided, hey, I'm going to put what I learned on YouTube. Hey, I'm going to put what I learned into a book. I'm going to put what I learned on social media. And I just think the more we can give out information, the more we can un-gatekeep. Because I know some people like to gatekeep shit. Yeah. Some people like to say, I'm not going to share this with others because I want this to be my own special advantage.

41:34What I want to see in the world and my vision for the world is we're not gatekeeping this information. Like we are actively sharing information and education with others so we can level the playing field and have a more equitable world.

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42:45Hala Taha:Yeah, fam, what's your weekday breakfast actually like? Be honest, because for me, it used to be coffee and starve myself till noon. Then I had Dr. Amy Shaw on the podcast, and she said something that I won't ever forget. She said the number one way to get more energy in the morning is a 30-gram protein breakfast. And that stuck with me, and that changed everything. Now, every weekday morning, I go for my 30-gram protein breakfast, and when I'm in a rush, I grab for Huel Black Edition Ready to Drink. It's 35 grams of protein, 27 vitamins and minerals, no artificial sweeteners, it's under$5, and the chocolate peanut butter flavor is just so dang good.

43:22Hala Taha:A complete meal I drink on the way to the studio and I'm full for hours. And I do this about three times a week. Now, I got sick a lot this winter. And so I made a decision. This spring and summer, I'm going all in on my health. No more drinking and a lot more Huel consistently. I'm not very good at remembering to eat, let alone taking my vitamins. So I've used habit stacking to help me. I do liquid vitamins in my coffee like B12. and my rule is if I don't have a Huel protein in the morning, I drink my Huel at lunch. That's the daily greens, 42 vitamins and minerals and superfoods and only 25 calories and it is absolutely delicious.

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44:30Hala Taha:Yep, gang, on the show, I've sat down with Robert Greene, Seth Godin, Alex Ramosi, Gretchen Rubin, James Clear, so many epic, epic guests. And what do all these guests have in common? Every single one of them has a bestselling book, and every one of those books are on Blinkist. Here's something I've been thinking about. With AI, everybody has access to the same answers, but the people who actually read, who absorb real ideas and think for themselves, they're the ones with the original take in the room. AI can summarize, but it cannot replace the frameworks that you build by reading widely. That's your real edge as an entrepreneur.

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45:39Hala Taha:That's blinkist.com slash profiting. Talk to us about how you first started as a creator. From my understanding, you got laid off and that really, that setback actually turned into an opportunity for you. Tell us how that unfolded. Yeah. So as I actually, most of my career has been being a ghostwriter for other people. So building other people's personal brands. So I was posting on and off very inconsistently, but I got laid off. I think this was 2019 or 2020. and that's what finally catapulted me because I was like I wish I could say that I bravely quit my job and decided to go all in on myself but I didn't it was forced I got laid off and so I was forced to post every day I was like fuck I gotta get a job I gotta figure this out and through that process of just committing I'm like I'm gonna post every single day no matter what no matter if it's a bad post, no matter if I don't feel like it, no matter if I'm sick, I am posting every single day for 365 days.

46:42And that year completely changed my life. I mean, absolutely insane. But yeah, I mean, that was basically my journey. I'd seen so many other people succeed with their personal brand. And I was like, I want that for myself.

46:55Hala Taha:How did you laser in on your niche? Like, were you testing different topics or were you like, I'm just going to start with careers and and land there? I love this question. I actually started posting about everything. I started posting about my dogs and living in Austin and my house and career and personal brand and all these other topics. And I just looked at the data of what are people liking. And it was a lot of career and personal brand. Another way that I would figure out what to post is I would ask my friends, hey, what advice do you ask me for? I would notice what advice my friends are asking me for.

47:34I would also ask my friends things like, when you think of me, what do you think of? So a lot of times, our zone of genius is so obvious to us that we don't even consider it. But our zone of genius might be mind-blowing to somebody else. And for me, that was career. I thought these career cheat codes were obvious. And so I was like, I would never post them because like, duh, people know this, or it's easily Google-able, or there's already a lot of career creators. And it wasn't until my friend was asking me throughout her whole job application journey and had a really good result that she was like, hey, you should share some of this stuff.

48:09And so I started sharing it.

48:12Hala Taha:And I know that you're a proponent of, like, sharing stuff even when it's not perfect. You call it B-plus content. Yes. Why is that so? Because I see people all the time, overthink, overthink, overthink their content to where they don't actually post. Or maybe they'll post once or twice, fall off for a couple months, do it again, and never actually get consistent, which that was actually me. I was overthinking. I was trying to make it so perfect that I never actually gained traction because I never actually was consistent. I actually believe there's two skills in personal breadth. Well, there's a lot of skills, but there's two main skills.

48:48One is the skill of consistency. Second is a skill of optimization. optimization you cannot optimize if you're not consistent yeah so some people they try to make like a 12 point strategy with their seven content pillars and the perfect time of day and the perfect whatever before they even get started but the truth is that is that's not that's going to be completely irrelevant in like a couple of weeks or a couple of months so I believe you should start posting consistently even if it's bad even if it sucks even if it's just an Instagram picture of your dog every day and like what you're feeding them.

49:20I don't give a fuck. Just start posting consistently every day. Once you have the habit down of posting consistently, then optimize. I love the book Atomic Habits, and it talks about a similar example of if you really want to get really fit, build a gym habit, have the best technique, the very first skill is just driving your car to the gym. Can you do that every day? Can you drive your car to the gym and literally sit in the parking lot. Okay. Now, once you've mastered that habit, go into the gym. It doesn't matter if you're walking on the treadmill for five minutes and you leave, you're just doing something.

49:56Then you're going to slowly optimize. But the reason why people fail at the gym is because they get this crazy seven-week program where it's super hard and they're so sore up to the first day. It doesn't integrate into their life. But consistency is more important than anything. Like there has not been a single person online that has showed up consistently every single day, slowly optimized and not seen success. It just doesn't happen. It doesn't exist. Yeah.

50:23Hala Taha:How do you suggest people decide what's the first platform they should focus on? And did you focus on one platform or did you focus on LinkedIn, TikTok and Instagram at the same time? I started on LinkedIn and I was only on LinkedIn for about a year before I went to TikTok. Then I I was on LinkedIn and TikTok for like two years before I went to Instagram. So I recommend people start with the platform where they will be the most consistent and where they will actually start. Because then when you move to the next platform, you have a lot of content, you can repurpose, it makes it a lot easier. But a mistake I see people make when they're building their personal brand is trying to be on 10 platforms at once.

51:00It's best to really understand one platform, optimize for that platform. And then once you're in a good rhythm, once you've built the habit, once you've really optimized, then pick your second platform and your third platform. Now, if you have a whole team or you're hiring a massive agency, you can skip the step. But most people don't have those resources. For most people, it's just them.

51:23Hala Taha:I totally agree. And I feel like the other thing that we need to talk about is everybody's strengths are different. So a lot of people are like, you know, I can't do social media because I'm not good at video. and LinkedIn doesn't need video. Substack is huge. That doesn't need video. School is blowing up. That doesn't really need video. So I feel like there's other avenues for people who don't necessarily want to be on video. Do you agree? Yeah, totally. I have a client right now that's making a ton of money on Instagram threads and does not require any video at all. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'm bad at video is just not true.

52:00It's a skill. It's like saying I'm bad at guitar. I've never been to a guitar lesson. I can't say I'm bad at guitar, right? If I go to a guitar lesson three times a week for the next 10 years, I will be good at guitar. Totally. Same as video. If you create a video every week, three times a week, every day for the next few years, you will be good at video. It is a learned skill. However, starting with video can be very scary, very overwhelming, and you might not get very far if it's not something that's sustainable for you. So like I said, I have a client right now that's just absolutely killing it on threads, start with the thing that's most comfortable for you.

52:38So if that's writing, great. If that's photos, great. If that's LinkedIn, if that's Substack, what is the most sustainable? Start there, build the habit, and then slowly grow. And it's also like our comfort zone, right? Like we got to push the edges of our comfort zone in our nervous system. And if you overwhelm your nervous system and go straight to like, I need to create all these fancy videos, it's going to be really overwhelming and you're not going to stick with it.

53:03Hala Taha:Yeah. And I feel like sometimes you approaching a platform differently, like everyone's posting reels on Instagram, but then you have like Case Kenny who posts like little like handwritten quotes and that's his thing. And he posts a handwritten quote every day and he's got like millions of followers now from doing that. It can also help you stand out to think about what's your strength and how can you apply that to the platform? Totally. Yeah. It's like, what are you obsessed with? Like for him, he's obsessed with like visual art topography, writing, that's incredible. Like what is somebody else obsessed with?

53:36Maybe you're obsessed with long form content. Maybe you're obsessed with video editing, sunsets and landscapes like that. Whatever you're obsessed with, your obsession will lead you down the path that's the most authentic to you. And I love that you bring up that example because there is also no right answer. Everything I have said today about career, about content, there are some people it's not going to apply to. There are some people that a different way is going to suit them. By doing it the wrong way is going to be better. So it's also important not to think that I got to find the perfect formula that is proven to work, that always works, that will work perfectly for me.

54:12That does not exist in anything that we do, not in entrepreneurship, not in career. So figure out what's authentic to you and take baby steps towards that. How did you make your first dollar online? Oh my gosh. The first dollar I made online was freelancing. I started posting on LinkedIn and somebody reached out and said, hey, can I get on a call with you to talk about LinkedIn? And I think I charged him 50 bucks. The first dollar I made from something outside of me was from an ebook. I wrote an ebook. I didn't write an ebook. I wrote LinkedIn blogs and my top performing LinkedIn blog. I copied it, pasted it into a PDF, and that became an ebook.

54:54Amazing. I listed it on Gumroad, and yeah, that was my first digital product sale. And today, how do you, like, what are all your different revenue streams today? Yeah, I've narrowed it down a lot. I'm glad you're asking me this today and not a year ago, because I simplified. So I have my content club where we meet every single day on Zoom, and I give you a content prompt. We work on it together. I have Level Up on LinkedIn, which is my LinkedIn cohort. That's very much around mindset of building your personal brand on LinkedIn and overcoming any visibility blocks. I do speaking, I have my book, and I do brand deals and that's all.

55:31Hala Taha:That's so cool. So what kind of freedom do you get from having all these diversified income streams? Yeah. I mean, it's so helpful because if something isn't going great one month, another income stream will help. And I even have things outside of my business too. I have like real estate and investments and all that. And it's really helpful because the market can change, social media can change. So to have backups and have that security of multiple income streams just makes me feel so much better. And they're all kind of scaling and compounding on their own independently, which is really, really beautiful.

56:09Hala Taha:What's the thing that's like working really incredibly well right now, either platform-wise or revenue stream wise? Great question. What's working well right now for recurring revenue is getting people to commit to a year. I've tested a lot in my content club and I just find that when people commit to a year and having really solid offers of like, yes, this is a month-to-month subscription, but when you upgrade to a year, you get all these extra bonuses. Their results are so much better. Just the mindset of them being locked into a year, they're showing up way more committed. They're so much more excited.

56:44They're excited to bring in other people. And it's a win-win because that helps my revenue a ton because now I'm creating much larger ARR.

56:53Hala Taha:Yeah, and consistency. Yeah. And then platform-wise, in terms of like getting leads to your content club, what's working? What's working really well right now is two things. One, on LinkedIn, storytelling, especially sharing personal stories. The more vulnerable I am on LinkedIn, the more people want to work with me. And I find that true for a lot of people around me. It can be really scary to be vulnerable on LinkedIn. Yeah. But I highly recommend it. It's back to standing out and doing what everybody thinks is the wrong thing to do on LinkedIn. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I mean, the thing that you struggled with is the thing people are going to connect with you over, right?

57:30Something else that's working really well is just giving free resources on Instagram. I love ManyChat, adding a keyword that goes to a free resource and bringing them into my top of funnel is really valuable right now. Very cool.

57:45Hala Taha:So I know one of the things that you're known for is public speaking. And a lot of people who are creating online brands, that's really their end goal. They want to get speaking engagements. Maybe they want to become an author. What is your best guidance for somebody who wants to get started in speaking and get these gigs? If you want to get started speaking, this is a little bit of a problematic tip. You start by creating your own events. You want a keynote? make the event you're keynoting at. Make your own conference. Put together a get together with others and speak at it. Make a retreat that you speak at.

58:16This is one of the best ways to get speaking gigs because you're guaranteeing it. Last year at South by Southwest, I applied to be a main speaker. I didn't get it. So I made my own South by Southwest event. And I had a ton of people come and I got to keynote my own little mini conference that I made. So that's how I would get started. As far as how to monetize your speaking, you got to be posting every day. That's so, so important. And when you're applying to speaking, make sure you're following up with everybody on LinkedIn. You can circumvent, like anytime there's like a speaking application, you can circumvent the entire application just by reaching out to one of the people that work on staff.

58:59Seems kind of sneaky. It is sneaky. In the same way that if you're job hunting, you got to be connected to 200 recruiters if you're looking for speaking gigs you got to be connected to 200 conference organizers yeah event planners they will reach out and then also get sneaky with the budget so sometimes they're not going to have they're going to say they don't have a budget to pay you but they do have a budget from some other department they might have a consulting budget a marketing budget whatever and you can offer them something else throw in something, there's always a budget that you can find.

59:35So yeah, those are my speaking tips.

59:37Hala Taha:Okay. So before we go, just a couple last questions. For those in corporate, what would you say is like one easy thing they can do today to become more visible at work?

59:50Ooh. I mean, if you want to be more visible at work, one thing you can do today, go post something on LinkedIn. It really is that simple. Post on LinkedIn and just put yourself out there. Yeah, post something on LinkedIn. What's amazing is that if you haven't posted on LinkedIn in a while, that initial post is going to remind so many people of you. And LinkedIn often will send out that post more, right? Like if it's been a while. Yeah. Another thing you can do is just share one win on Slack or Teams or whatever today. Just one tiny win. Share it with your boss. Share it with your team. Just elevate your work a little bit.

1:00:27Hala Taha:Yeah. Well, I loved your book, Career Cheat Codes. It was awesome. I feel like it's going to be so valuable for those in corporate. I also feel like entrepreneurs can learn a lot from it. So I end my show with two questions that I ask all my guests. The first is, and this could be related to the episode or whatever you want, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to be more profitable tomorrow? Ooh, one actionable thing that young and profiters can do today to be more profitable tomorrow. Love that question. Um, set up a free call with 10 prospects or clients. It could be a 15 minute call.

1:01:05What you're going to do is you're going to ask them their problem. So Hala, I know you really want to build a personal brand. Like what's in the way? Like, what are you struggling with? I really want to understand your language. I'm going to transcribe all 10 of these interviews on Zoom or Otter or whatever, put them in a chat GPT and pull out the language of my audience. So a lot of times when we're creating our landing pages, we're creating our social content. It's from our perspective and our words. When you flip that to your customer's perspective and words, you're going to get way higher conversions and thus be way more profitable.

1:01:36So go give out some free interviews, ask people their problems, take their exact language and start to sprinkle that language into your marketing materials.

1:01:45Hala Taha:So smart. You always want to talk like your audience so they feel like you're a like-minded friend. Yeah, they're like, oh my God, how are you in my head right now? Like that is what you want. And what would you say your secret to profiting in life is? Mm, secret to profiting in life is consistency. It's just showing up every single day, even when you don't feel like it. Consistency compounds. The only way to fail the entrepreneur game, the personal brand game is to stop. It's to quit. It's to come up with an excuse and say, I'm gonna come back in two weeks, right? Show up with a micro step every single day and it's going to compound and you will be successful.

1:02:22Hala Taha:Consistency is everything. It really is. The only thing that matters. It really is. Courtney, where can everybody find more about you and everything that you do? Yeah, you can find my book, Career Cheat Codes, on Amazon and all the places books are sold. You can find me on Instagram at Courtlyn Johnson or TikTok at Courtney period period Johnson. If you just Google Courtney Johnson, all my stuff will come up. So I hope to see you on my socials. Amazing. And I'll put your links in the show notes. Thank you again for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you, Hala. Well, Young and Profiters, what a masterclass from Courtney Johnson today.

1:02:56Hala Taha:She shattered the biggest myth we've been fed, that if you keep your head down and work hard, you'll automatically get rewarded. You won't, not unless people can see your work. The real differentiator is visibility. Courtney calls it working out loud, and it's simpler than you think. Start with the Monday, Wednesday, Friday rule. Tell your boss the top five priorities on Monday, give a progress report on Wednesday, and send a win summary on Friday. That single habit builds trust, reduces micromanagement, and puts you front of mind when promotions are handed out. Next, stop optimizing for effort and start optimizing for impact, specifically your boss's goals.

1:03:34Hala Taha:Know what they're trying to achieve both professionally and personally and align your work to that. Then add one micro step beyond what's expected. It's not always about being perfect. It's about being the obvious choice. And finally, build your personal brand now. Yesterday, in fact. Post on LinkedIn Weekly. Connect with recruiters. Strengthen your profile with the right keywords. You don't really need to go viral, but you do need to stay consistent. Because consistency compounds and invisible talent stays overlooked. So stop hiding yourself. And if this episode inspired you, help Young and Profiting get seen too.

1:04:09Hala Taha:Share us, comment on our show, and leave us a five-star written review. That's how we grow this movement. You can now watch all of our live and in-person interviews just like this on Spotify Video and YouTube. I also love connecting with you guys personally, so come say hi to me on Instagram at yapwithhala or connect with me on LinkedIn by searching my name, Halataha. This is your host, Halataha, a.k.a. the Podcast Princess, signing off.