This Ex-Doctor Turned Career Regret Into a $2M Business Helping Healthcare Workers Pivot | Entrepreneurship | How We Profit | E9

22:53Hala Taha:And so while you were working in corporate, you also started a podcast, right? I did, yeah. So actually while I was in medical school, I started the podcast. Oh, wow, a long time ago. Yeah, it was in 2017. Okay. I was doing my first few episodes on Skype. So, and because Zoom wasn't even around then and it was just so early. Yeah. And so it was called Beyond Medicine. and I had, what I did was I would interview physicians that were famous on social media, ask them what they're doing beyond medicine, what they're doing with their social media platforms. No wonder you left. You got all this inspiration from all these other people who had left medicine.

23:30Yeah, so I had that entrepreneurial blog and I was actually making money from my podcast during medical school and residency. I was selling t-shirts and all these other things and it wasn't a lot, but it was a small business for me at the time. And so, yeah, that did trigger my inspiration. And I think looking back, I was always interested in that. But yeah, that was my first podcast and I grew it through influencers at the time, which was kind of like a new thing.

23:56Hala Taha:Okay, ladies, girl to girl. If your bra or shapewear is making you uncomfortable all day, it's time to break up with it. You should not have to choose between feeling supported and feeling comfortable. That's what I love about Honey Love. Their bras are wire-free, but still give you that lifted, flattering, secure feeling. I was surprised because when I hear wire-free, I usually think comfy, but not necessarily cute or supportive. But Honey Love is both. I especially love their new crossover contour bra. It has light foam pads that create a smooth, contoured shape under your clothes. I hate it when you can see your bra under your clothes.

24:29Hala Taha:This makes it totally seamless. And I'm obsessed with their shapewear. I tried their Superpower Short. It gives you that sculpted look without making you feel squeezed into something you just can't wait to take off. It's comfortable, flattering, smooth under my clothes, and it looks great. Plus, Honey Love is female-founded and designed by women. And you can tell because the details feel really thoughtful. It's clear that a woman made these. Treat yourself to the most advanced bras and shapewear on the market. Use our exclusive link to save 20 % off Honey Love at honeylove.com slash profiting.

25:00Hala Taha:That's honeylove.com slash profiting for 20 % off. After you check out, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that Young and Profiting sent you. Experience a new standard in comfort and support with Honeylove. Hey, Yap Gang. As Yap Media has grown, I've learned that communication can get messy fast. Some clients live in Slack. Some clients would rather text all the time. Others just want to call you. And when a deal is closing or a new opportunity comes in, I don't want important conversations trapped on somebody's personal phone. I don't want to be blocked.

25:32Hala Taha:That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. The business phone system built so you never miss an opportunity. Quo gives your team shared business texting and calling. So if a client reaches out, the right person can jump in, see the conversation history, and then respond quickly. Calls, texts, and voicemails are all in one place, keeping things super organized and making sure that nothing slips through the cracks. So if you're growing a business and still managing customer communication from your personal phone, it's probably time for an upgrade. Money's on the line. Always say hello with Quo.

26:05Hala Taha: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.com slash profiting. So you ended up starting Matchday. Talk to us about like how you, like what was the first iteration of the Matchday concept? Yeah, so I started Matchday in 2023. So the first iteration of that was we were doing a startup. and we went and actually pitched the idea that we want to build like the Tinder for doctor jobs and build a matching platform that helps physicians and other clinicians land jobs in a better way. And so we raised about a million dollars in capital from investors, angel investors, and we started building the platform.

26:52And it started that way. And obviously, and then it just evolved from there into something completely different.

26:58Hala Taha:Okay. So it started as a Tinder for doctors. Why don't you think that worked? Why didn't you continue building that? Did it ever launch? We never actually launched it, no. So we spent money on hiring the right team, engineers, building the tech stack, and then doing sales and finding partnerships. And so we were looking to partner with hospital systems and we were talking to hospital systems. And at the time we were burning about like$30 ,000 a month, which is not that much for a startup. I think it's pretty lean actually for a startup. But still, you know, we were burning that capital every month.

27:34We were spending money on engineers to build the tech stack. And that was before Claude and all of that came about. And it was all really expensive. And so come, you know, the end of 2023 going to 2024, I started to realize we're going to burn through all of our capital before we even have our first partnership signed. And, you know, for anybody familiar with hospital, selling to hospital systems or B2B, those life cycles can take a year, a year and a half. And we didn't have that time as a startup, as a small startup. You know, we were going to burn through that capital. We were going to go back to investors and ask to raise.

28:09And they were going to ask us, well, what do you have? What's your revenue? And how much have you grown? And so I kind of saw the writing on the wall at some point that we're going to run out of money and we're going to still be trying to get this one pilot on. And it was keeping me up at night. And I knew like, I'm going to have to go back to my investors and say, Hey, this whole business has failed and I'm really sorry. And I just couldn't live with that. And it was like, yeah, I just remember I woke up at three in the morning, one time, one night, and I was just sitting there and I was just so stressed out.

28:45Like I just had like my hands, like my head in my, in my palms. And I was just like thinking like, what am I going to do? This business cannot fail. I'm not going to go back to my investors and say that we failed. And so I just prayed that night. I was like, God, show me a way that I can take this business and open up that path for us. Very next day, I go to LinkedIn and I post on LinkedIn just kind of like a hunch, an intuition to see how people would respond to it. And I say, if you're a healthcare professional and you want to go and land a non-clinical job, comment on this post. We can help you do it.

29:24it went viral. I think 200 ,000 impressions, got a thousand comments. And everybody that commented, I just said like, I don't know, comment career or something. But we got all these people commenting and filling out the form. And I hired a VA to just reach out to every single person. And all of a sudden I was like, okay, this is something people actually want.

29:48Hala Taha:Yeah. It's something that I know really well. Maybe we pivot the business to this and just help all of these people that so desperately want to change actually land a job and pivot. And so the lesson I learned from that was I fell in love with the solution in the very beginning. I had this idea to build a tech company, to be a startup founder, to do something cool in health tech and help with job matching. That was the dream. That was the goal. That was what I was going to do. We were building tech. And then what I realized is I fell in love with the wrong thing. I fell in love with something that was make-believe that people didn't really want.

30:31And if they did want, it was going to take forever to actually build. And I went to falling in love with the problem. So many of these doctors and clinicians, they didn't really care about clinical jobs. They didn't care about another tech solution to help them because recruiters were reaching out to them all the time. They had a ton of options and it wasn't a real like major problem for them. Instead, they were wanting to build new careers, get their life back, land better jobs, not feel stuck like I was feeling stuck. And it was a huge pain and there was no solution. So basically, I fell in love with the problem of figuring that out and figuring out how do I actually help them in this area.

31:15Hala Taha:Is that when you funneled everybody to a Slack community from that post? From that post, we took everybody and put them into a CRM. So we had a little form, had them fill it out, went to a CRM. And then we just started calling everybody one by one, emailing them and setting up appointment times to basically see if they were willing to work with us to help them land a job. And what was your first offer? The first offer, that's a good question, because it evolved into what it is now. So the first iteration of this was because we didn't have any social proof or any track record, it was a contract.

31:54So you would work with us. We would invest in you, basically, and help you land a job. And after you land a job, the agreement would say you would pay us a percent of your first year salary. And so it was like 7 % or something like that.

32:08Hala Taha:Did people actually do it? Yeah. So in the first iteration of that, we took on all the risk. We paired them with a coach. We helped them land a job and people started paying us, you know, if they landed$100 ,000 job,$7 ,000. But that came with its issues and problems. That's why we ended up pivoting to the model we have now. I read that you had a Slack community. We did. That was a Beyond Medicine group. Okay, that was from the podcast back then. From the podcast, yeah, yeah. Okay. Did any of those people end up becoming clients later on or that was like long gone? I think so, yeah. There were people that I knew through that community that ended up being clients.

32:43but it wasn't a huge percentage of them.

32:45Hala Taha:I asked that because actually my company, Yap Media, basically started as a Slack channel. I basically had fans that would reach out to me that loved the podcast and they were like, how can I help? And I started a volunteer team in Slack and that turned into my whole company now and we're making like almost$10 million a year. Yeah, and you know, before I took the leap on Match Day, we like, we tried so many ways to, so first it was a community. It was called Beyond Medicine Group. was off the podcast. I charged$99 a year to become a member and I grew up to like 300 people. And at the time I started, you know, getting three or four signups every single day.

33:23So it was like $400 every day coming in, going into the Slack community. And that was when I realized I was like, oh, I can actually leave my job and pay my rent and start building this. And so the second iteration of Beyond Medicine Group was matched to health. So we started it as a community in a way, but we were trying to like tell the story of like, it can be so much bigger than that. Yeah.

33:49Hala Taha:Let's pause there for a second. So basically you're saying that when you were working at the startup, that's when you started the Slack community. And then that side hustle gave you the funds to then become an entrepreneur or just try new business ideas. Is that right? It gave me the confidence because I started to see like I was getting, you know, three or four signups every single day. And I was working for I was VP of clinical operations for an AI startup. And I didn't, I was learning a lot. I enjoyed it. But I just, my goal and my head was always like, think back to the fellowship. I have three years to do this.

34:25I was coming up on year two almost. So I was like, I got to figure this out now and start planting those seeds. And so once it got to a point where I was like, I can just pay my bills. Now, even if it was just like making$3 ,000 a month, I was like, I'm willing to take that risk. And as soon as Beyond Medicine Group, which is now match day, hit that point, I was like, all right, I'm all in.

34:46Hala Taha:First iteration, like we were saying, was It's basically like a recruiter model, right? You get somebody a job, they give you a percentage of their first year salary. What is the model now? The model now is it's paid up front by the client. And so in the recruiter model, the recruiters work for companies and they get paid when they match someone. So it's like you having your own personal recruiter, but they're not really a recruiter. They're a coach. They're invested in your success. They're invested in you getting a job. That's obviously something you would have to pay for to have that white glove service.

35:21And so the fellowship now is a coaching program and it's paid up front by the client.

35:27Hala Taha:And you call it a fellowship. Yeah. So basically it's these medical professionals. It was doctors just at first. And now you've widened it up to nurses and other types of... Well, who can do it? What are the types of professionals? Pretty much any healthcare professional. Anybody with a clinical background from medical assistants to physical therapists to nurses, PAs, NPs, doctors, pretty much anyone who's built their career around a healthcare profession and is looking to make a career transition. And so going something non-clinical in industry, mainly, you know, our focus is health tech and life science.

36:06Hala Taha:So now what is the most recent offer? What is it exactly? So it's a three-month fellowship and it's$6 ,000. Okay. For the most reason. Three-month fellowship,$6 ,000. How many clients do you have typically? Every month we sign up around, it could vary like between 20 and 40. Okay. So yeah, around that number. And, you know, active we have about 150 fellows. The hard part about that model is that every three months you need new customers, right? It's like kind of like a leaky bucket. So have you thought about how to extend lifetime value? Yeah, that's something I've actually thought about a lot.

36:43And it actually used to be a six-month fellowship, but it was six months for a year, and then we condensed it down to three months because a lot of the value and just the refinement of the program, we were able to get a lot of that down to three months. But yes, it's kind of like the high-ticket space. You always have that problem of having to chase new revenue. and we've thought about different ways where we can continue to support people beyond three months. We haven't really figured out what is right for our clients and what's actually going to be a good business model to invest in yet. Right now, it's just a variation of different upselling opportunities.

37:23So extension beyond three months or, you know, I think that's the next stage we want to figure out.

37:30Hala Taha:Yeah, it's like what happens after three months? How does this person still keep, because, you know, your best customers are your existing customers, as most people know. Let's talk about your customers for a little bit. You started with doctors. The problem with doctors is that they basically have golden handcuffs, right? They get paid a decent amount of money. I can tell my brother's story because his story was actually, like, really positive. So he was a pediatric neurologist. He was making, like,$300 ,000 a year more. very busy. He has two kids, two young kids. He used to get so stressed out if they got sick because both him and his wife are in health care.

38:09Hala Taha:So it's like they'd have to cancel patients. And it was like very difficult for them to handle anytime a kid was sick. He would have neighbors who would be like eating lunch in the middle of the day. He never could do that. He used to have to take calls at two in the morning. And then he was just like, I love my job. It's rewarding. It's very rewarding to have patients be grateful and everything like that. It's like instant reward. But he just wanted a better lifestyle. And so he just, you know, figured it out and went on LinkedIn and started at, you know, one company and then kept moving his way up.

38:45Hala Taha:And now he has an amazing job. He's making like almost double the amount of money. And I'm sure in the beginning he was making just about the same. But for other doctors, that's not necessarily the case. Like they might have to take a pay cut. And I think those are the golden handcuffs that they have, right? Absolutely. And it's actually one of the things we realized as we started progressing. We actually moved away from really marketing to positions at all. And we focused on the healthcare professionals that were earning between$80 ,000 and$150 ,000. Because for them, they could make a career transition horizontally and still earn the same amount of money or maybe a little bit more.

39:25And so the career pivot for them just made so much more sense. Whereas like you mentioned, physicians earn a lot higher incomes. And so they're not necessarily willing to go into like a mid to entry level job, which is the case for most physicians. Like if you wanted to do a career transition, you probably need to take a pay cut. But not for all, many can pivot into pharma like your brother and actually earn more money. but I'm sure for your brother, it was actually really difficult to have to figure that out on his own and, you know, navigate that entire process. Totally.

39:58Hala Taha:I remember it was very difficult for him. And it was kind of like he got lucky. He got like a big break, you know, there was like one specific company that needed a pediatric neurologist and there's not that many in the world and you know what I mean? So he had to like find the exact opportunity that was a fit for him and then kind of navigate his way. But it worked out. He's so much happier, you know, and ultimately he spends so much of your life working that you want to be happy. So what kind of jobs, like for all the nurses, there's so many nurses in the world and medical assistants, for everybody tuning in, what kind of job opportunities are really out there for people who have medical degrees that are not clinical?

40:39There's such a wide variation and I'm honestly always surprised because I see a new job title out there and I'm like, oh, another new job that could be for clinicians. But they're not really marketed for clinicians. They're marketed for people with X, Y, and Z background. They always say healthcare background preferred or something along those lines. So I'd say it falls into four main categories. The first one is probably sales being the big category. I would put customer success under there, account executive, account manager, medical device sales, pharma sales. So anything in that category I've put there, maybe even MSL or medical affairs.

41:18Hala Taha:One of my best friends just reminded me she was a nurse. So smart, so bright. She went to medical device sales. She's making so much money now. She's crushing it. Yeah, and sales is definitely, and I love sales, and it's probably like I encourage people to learn sales and get into sales as much as possible because it's such a good skill to learn. But it's definitely also got the highest ceiling and highest earning potential potentially. actually. So sales is one of them. I put operations maybe on the second category that can include clinical operations, coordination, program management, project management, product management as well.

41:56It's a very popular one. There's just so many different job titles that can fall under that. I would say a third category is education or content writing. And then the fourth category would be the consulting or strategy side of things.

42:09Hala Taha:So in terms of like costs of delivering all these services, you have coaches and it sounds like you've had coaches from like almost the very beginning. So how do you find these coaches? How do you vet these coaches? How do you pay these coaches? How big of a cost is that? Yeah, absolutely. So we have two full-time coaches. They're our program directors and we pay them a full salary. Okay. So it's not for client? It's salary-based. It's salary-based for the program directors. And these are super experienced coaches, Chanel and Jenny. They're wonderful. And they basically built out the entire program for us.

42:47And they did all of the hiring and the recruiting. And so we've got about 15, I want to say 15 contractor coaches at the moment. And so they just step in as needed. We We have so many different clients and they have different schedules. And so we need a lot of availability that's flexible for our clients.

43:08Hala Taha:Got it. And so we rely on contractors to support kind of like outside of our two main coaches as jobs. I can imagine that could be very difficult. Quality control. Yeah. Reliability. And also with a service like this that's high ticket, you've got to really deliver for your customers. And if you've got like one bad review on Reddit, it could crush everything, right? Absolutely. We spent, and really for me, like I wanted to build the best program. And to do something like that, you have to hire the best people. And so my first two hires, like we really just spent like so much time interviewing, talking to the right people, asking for referrals.

43:46And that was the big difference maker because they really built the bulk of the program. And when you hire people who are A +, they hire other people who are A+. That is so, so important in program delivery because when your clients are happy, like you said, if you even have one bad review, it can hurt your business. And thankfully for us, we've got, I think, 4.7 on Trustpilot, all five-star reviews, and all of our clients have been super happy so far. And if there ever haven't been, we just go above and beyond to make it right or help them in whatever way we can. And that's so important.

44:26Hala Taha:So with a$6 ,000 fee for the coaching program, how much profit do you make off that with all the different expenses from the coaches, from your team? You have like a pretty small like executive team, like five people or something like that. How much profit do you have? Well, our gross profit margin is around 60%. Okay, that's pretty good. 55 to 60%. And then our net profit margin, it just really depends for us on how much we're reinvesting back into the business or spending on marketing. Yeah. But that could be around, you know, I'd say 20%, 30%. So how do you get your customers today? So today, the main channel is obviously paid.

45:03Okay. Why is that obvious? I think for the high ticket space, it's actually pretty common that a lot of people are doing meta. But we've actually been also getting a lot of referrals. So, you know, I think that's been becoming much more common now that we're more established. People have heard about us and we've got a lot more fellows who have gone through the program. So referrals and then organic as well. My Instagram, my LinkedIn, the company page.

45:32Hala Taha:This podcast. Yeah, this podcast, hopefully. Which I need to do more of and tell my story. Yeah, you need to do more podcasts. Well, I don't know. You had a podcast. I was like, he probably does a fairly amount of - Okay, okay. I was thinking you might be doing a fair amount of podcasts if you had a podcast. Well, let me ask you this. Do you like being interviewed or do you like being the interviewer? I like being interviewed when I have something to say. So if I have like a new course and I've got all this material in my head or if I just had a new webinar and I've got all these ideas. But I hate being interviewed when like I don't have anything new going on because then I just feel like boring, you know?

46:06Hala Taha:So I'm not doing interviews until I launch my book, which I'm in the progress of writing. So once I have my book out, I'll save all my favors for them. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so let's talk about paid ads meta. I tried paid ads once. I get all my clients through referrals essentially. So I have a social media podcast agency and I have a podcast network. Most of my clients actually are guests on the podcast and then they just become my client. All right. Sign me up after this. I basically designed this podcast that way. Yeah, I could definitely help you with like podcast appearances and all.

46:41Hala Taha:I have so many different services that people that come on my show want those types of like LinkedIn management, Instagram, podcast production, monetization of their channels, all that kind of stuff. So I've designed a really cool like lead gen engine. And then also we grow our brand really wide so that when my team does outreach, like everybody knows about my podcast and media. And even if they don't come on my podcast, like the brand gets us in and we don't have to do really any paid other than like how much it costs to do like outbound email. So we never do paid ads. I did it once and it totally flopped.

47:14Hala Taha:Yeah. But I didn't try hard enough. So what was your experience with paid ads? Like what was like some of your first campaigns? Like what is working for you? Yeah. So, well, when we started off, we started with like a super low ad spend to just get leads and talk to them and learn. And then we have to figure out, you know, is what we're offering here something they want? And so in the beginning, we were offering basically kind of like it was kind of like a no brainer. Like we were taking on all the risk. We were letting you sign up for I think it was like$500 to sign up for three months, get coaching.

47:49And then you only have to pay us when you actually get a job. And so we just had such low risk, such a no-brainer offer that we would just talk to people and they'd say, okay, you're going to take on all the risk. And then we'd help them get jobs and pivot and actually be successful. And then they would actually be so grateful they would pay us. And so in the beginning, we're just spending like a low amount on Meta, maybe a couple thousand dollars a month. And then once people started landing jobs, we realized, oh, okay, this works, great. but it came to a point where cash flow became the constraint and so the model we were doing wasn't actually a good model because it just delayed cash flow and then for whatever reason sometimes people wouldn't be able to pay or they'd have to pay it over a longer period of time.

48:35Hala Taha:Yeah how would you even like prove it or I guess you had a contract but like you're not going to go spend legal fees for seven thousand dollars it would cost the same amount to take it to court right? Exactly. So for that reason, we pivoted the model. We collected the cash upfront, which allows us to cash flow the business and grow it. And so it reached a point where when we were closing five or six a month, we started to increase the ad spend. And then at one point, we changed the model, made it all upfront. We started hiring a sales team, setters and closers. And then it just kind of started growing from there.

49:12Hala Taha:You know what I would do if I was trying to grow your business? Tell me. Webinars. Webinars. We do that now. You do webinars? I mean, I would focus on growing your personal brand. Because this is a topic that a lot, there's so many medical professionals in the world. How big is the market? Like how many medical professionals are there? There's around 10 million healthcare professionals if you count all of the - In the US. Yeah. If you count all of the allied health and like support staff and that. That's so many people. 4 million nurses alone in the US. And it's like, it's very targetable on LinkedIn.

49:43Hala Taha:So you could be searching different titles and then DMing people, inviting them to your free educational webinar, and then mass closing them. You know what I mean? So that's what I would do. I would be like, find every single nurse and every single medical assistant and invite them to this free webinar, give them an hour of great content, and then close them in mass. I actually do want to pick your brain about that because I totally agree. Pick my brain right now. Let's do it. Well, I guess, so I've been doing a webinar every week now. Yeah. So I have it on my personal LinkedIn page. Okay. And I did it because, one, we've done supplemental webinars.

50:18So all of our leads that don't close or pay on the call, we send them link. Come to the free webinar if you're not convinced yet.

50:26Hala Taha:And the best thing about Zoom webinars is you can collect their email and their phone number when they sign up. So if they sign up once, you've got their email to retarget them over and over. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. And so we do all the retargeting and it builds trust really. And that's the biggest thing because when people want to spend$6 ,000, like they really want to know they can trust you. And you can't build trust off a paid ad. That's why it flopped for me because on social, people would follow me for years and I'd sell something. They have like years of content and trust on a paid ad. They have no idea who I am.

50:57Hala Taha:So we'd paid ad to webinar is always the way to go in my opinion. Yeah. I want to, and I'd love to get your opinion on, on, you know, um, Having those be paid webinars versus free? Free. Free for all of them. Free. And I know a lot about webinars. I've interviewed like Russell Brunson about it, Jason Fladline about it. I've done maybe 200 webinars myself. A lot. So what you want to do on a webinar is you want to give free educational content, but you do not want to give too much. You don't want to overwhelm. So you want to tell your own hero story, which you've got a really great hero story, right so you actually were your own customer like you you're you have the experience to help them because you went through the same thing so you want to go through something called a hero story and like that's the first 15 minutes of the webinars you just inspiring them with your hero story making them feel relatable to you of the same you had the same pain points and then you are establishing your credibility of like how many people you've gotten jobs so far how you turned it around and like how you just like want to give back and help them now make their own transition.

52:09Hala Taha:Right. Then you give them like a promise of like by the end of this webinar and the next 45 minutes, I'm going to help you do X, Y and Z. And you pick like one, like 5 % or even 2 % of what you would teach them in the coaching program. One nugget that they can walk away with and like implement or like that's actually meaningful and like walk them through like a framework. And then if they want more, you tell them the offer and you give them like an incentive to actually buy then. So in the next 24 hours, you get a 20 % discount or, you know, use this promo code or whatever it is. And you give them like some sort of offer at the end.

52:48And then

52:48Hala Taha:there's like camaraderie and people chatting. You can invite your past students to give you shout outs and even come on and talk about their experience. And you can get really creative. And so it's a great way to mass sell. And especially for something like this, where there's so many people, if it was like something really niche, I wouldn't recommend this. But because there's so many people that would be interested and there's so much to teach, like you could just do it about like how to be confident in your interview or something, you know? You're spot on. And that's actually such good advice.

53:17And we made the mistake, I think, of overteaching in some of our webinars where we go too deep in like how to actually do something. It's like so valuable. Yeah, you don't want to go too deep. Whereas like then they just want to go and do it on their own.

53:31Hala Taha:Or they get scared. And they're like, this is way too much. This is way too much work. You want to just talk about the outcome and like not how hard it's going to be and all the work, right? A hundred percent. So just like a couple small things that like you want to teach them and take them away to build that trust and like to get them feeling like, okay, this is the company that I want to work with. If I got this for free, I can't imagine what it would be if I paid for it. Right. Yeah. And then case studies of all the success that you've had, like all the credibility. because you've actually helped a lot of people land jobs.

53:59Hala Taha:So you've got something that other people don't have, which is like proof points. Totally, yeah. And I think social proof has definitely been like the biggest thing for us is both on the paid side as well, like our best ads are social proof. And then the more we can sprinkle it in on our website and our socials, it's always like really boosted our sales. Yeah, so you actually have a pretty decent email list, right? We do, we've got about 18 ,000. Nice, how did you get those emails? else? Yeah, paid. Paid ads. Paid ads mostly and probably organic, just website visits. We've invested a lot in SEO.

54:35Yeah, that's smart. Being kind of like this unique brand in healthcare for career transitions. I do believe we're the market leader. I don't think there's anybody else in terms of like quality or scale that's this niche providing this type of solution for healthcare They're professionals. And so when people search non-clinical careers or pivoting, we usually come up and we're the first kind of, you know, place people usually learn about these sort of things. But that's been a big driver of growth for us and collecting emails. And I will say, you know, we're kind of, I still think we're kind of a baby company because we spent our first year, 2023, we did$8 ,000 in sales, nothing.

55:202024, we did$30 ,000. 2025, we did almost a million.

55:26Hala Taha:Wow. What changed that year? The entire model. Yeah, okay. That's when you pivoted the model. And then this year, we'll do almost 2 million. That's great. How much does it cost to acquire a customer? What's your customer acquisition cost? Right now, it fluctuates between$1 ,200 and$2 ,000. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah. So, damn, I'm so lucky I get all my customers for free. Yeah, you are lucky. I get paid. I get paid to have my customers because I get paid for a podcast. Yeah. And so, and that's actually pretty common in the industry for these high ticket programs. There's so much kind of, you got to separate the signal from the noise and you just have to talk to the right people.

56:09And yeah, so I don't like giving Mark Zuckerberg all of our money, but unfortunately it's the way, you know, right now we're building brand awareness and it's been profitable. So we have a, you know, around a four to five X ROAS at the moment. So it works. It's just not ideal.

56:25Hala Taha:Yeah, it's not ideal. Organic is so good. But to your point, it's like, it's working, you're profitable. You can just keep pushing at it and scaling it that way and just maximizing the effectiveness of your meta ads campaigns. But organic, what are you working on? I know you mentioned SEO. Are you doing anything with AI, like AEO? So yes, our agency is actually building our AEO strategy and all of that. And so it goes along with like building the FAQs and, you know, the SEO and all that. So we got, we have like 10 blog posts going out every week to build our SEO strategy and get in search engines.

57:03But we're also doing, and this is the part I'm most excited about. we used to have to hire a social media manager to basically run our Instagram. And right now we're able to put out 10 times the volume through Claude and through building frameworks and skills and then running many chat automations from our posts. So we're getting hundreds of comments on our posts every single week that lead to nurturing funnels, career assessment quizzes, webinars, all these different things. and that's boosted our sales like, I'd say like 20%. Okay.

57:39Hala Taha:Unpack this. Yeah. So is that like many different Instagram channels that you guys are just like, like kind of like clipping? No, it's the Matchday Health Instagram page. Okay, it's one Instagram page. And what are you saying? Like Claude's helping you come up with content? Yeah, carousels have just been major for us. So the way carousels work is it goes mainly to your followers first. And so because we spend so much, you know, we spend around$1 ,000 a day in meta ads. And we get a lot of followers on our Instagram. We're also running organic posts. All those people follow our Instagram and probably lurk for a long time.

58:14And so through these carousels, we do a lot of education about non-clinical jobs, about careers, about what they can land, because this is a space that requires a lot of education. People still don't know enough about it. And so we get people to comment, there's the automations, and then they can go into our newsletter or book a call with our team. And we've just seen a huge bump in our organic sales every month. And it's just been like a huge supplement to our paid meta ads.

58:43Hala Taha:Let me give you a tip. Take all your best performing carousels and make them trial reels. Interesting. And then my Instagram has been blowing up from trial reels. Like I just got a, like last week, I had a video that had a million views, 500 ,000 views, 300 ,000, Like huge, huge videos. And each video is giving me like 3 ,000 followers. Like it is crazy. Like I'm about to grow really fast on Instagram. And the thing that wins is actually the topics. It's what is getting people to comment and have a conversation. So you have all this data now of all the carousels that generated comments and conversation.

59:19Hala Taha:Turn those into reels. Take each idea and do it five times. Five different hooks or like switch up the video because you can't upload the same video and do five trial reels a day of like the same concept and just do that every day. And like, I guarantee you it's going to pop off. Like, so basically Instagram is - Hear that, Andrew? Yeah. Get on this. Instagram is basically pushing trial reels to followers. And especially because you've trained like your word cloud of your Instagram page of like all the keywords that you use. Like Instagram knows what you talk about because you guys have been consistent in your topics.

59:57Hala Taha:So your trial reels are going to go to people who want that and who, and like, basically, if you have one or two of your trial rules that are doing well, as people are scrolling, they're just going to get fed like your next video. It's just really awesome. And it's, it's kind of like, I've never seen this much traction on Instagram for like brand new accounts or not super popular accounts, like for my clients, it's working really well. So like definitely lean into trial. Interesting. I'd love to ask you, like, I'm guessing you have a team that works with you on your social media. How much of a hand do you have in like the strategy or, you know, pushing them to do certain things?

1:00:34Hala Taha:Well, I'm a busy woman, but like my 11 p.m. at night, I'm always checking like my YouTube, my Instagram and like giving everybody feedback. I am involved in the strategy and setting the higher level strategy. Like what do we want to focus on? What features do we want to use? But my team, I have like a big team and my team is really like drafting the nitty gritty content. We've got like a B-roll library of like approved videos and approved photos. So I don't always have to like approve every single little thing. And then anything super personal I review, like if it's like a Mother's Day post or a post about my boyfriend, then like I want them to be the one writing that, you know?

1:01:15Hala Taha:So it's like I I work on those. But other than that, my team is basically doing like everything. And I basically have like monthly social media meetings, biweekly content, brand team meetings where we're talking about YouTube, podcast, everything, you know. And so I'm always directing my team. I think a big part of my job is just directing everyone, but not the nitty gritty day to day of like, this is the post we're going to post today, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Not to hijack your show, but I guess - No, go for it. I'm curious - I'm sure the listeners want to know. Well, I'm curious, like, what do you exactly mean by directing?

1:01:52Are you, like, supporting or, like, setting the vision for them or more so, you know, showing them what to do or that sort of thing?

1:02:01Hala Taha:I have so many things going on. So, to kind of break down, like, all the different, like, areas of my brand, right? So, I have my podcast, which is, like, audio and YouTube. And, like, we're really focused on growing YouTube. Then we have LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, email. And in a biweekly meeting, I've got my whole team on. It's like 20 people on. And everybody's got their work stream and reporting out on like what they did this week, what they did last week. And then they're telling me what they're doing. And I'm like, okay, like I noticed this mistake or I want this guest on the show or like with trial reels, like let's just focus on the biggest guests, not the most recent guests.

1:02:42Hala Taha:And let's just lean into that. or because I'm really like hands-on in terms of like I'm looking at every comment that's going on my page and like I'm really looking at it every day so that in the meeting with my team I can bring up like hey I saw we're doing this I don't want to do that anymore or whatever but basically everybody's like there's like somebody responsible for every yeah every like area that makes it almost like you're distilling all the insights too because you're seeing what's working what's moving. They're telling me like we grew this much or like we went viral here. I'm learning new things too.

1:03:16Hala Taha:Like, oh, TikTok grew 10K. I didn't know that. Like, you know what I mean? So that's how I get my information because there's just so much going on. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Okay. Back to you. So match day. What about the tools that you're using? What technology are you using to run this all? Like how do people like schedule time with their coach? How do you monitor coaching calls and things like that. Yeah. And so this is the part I love, and it's probably so relevant for someone who's starting a business or, you know, wanting to start their own business is you can start with off the shelf tools for everything.

1:03:51And what I mean by that is like Google Drive, Notion, Slack, Gmail, obviously all these different off the shelf tools, subscriptions, you know we have a ton of subscriptions that we use but we don't have any of our own tech stack right now that we use we actually built it in the very first year and it was useless and it's actually not great and it was super expensive and doesn't help the users but you made your own platform got it yeah and it wasn't very effective because at the end of the day people just need the tools that they need and they actually like using the tools they're already familiar with slack notion google drive all these things and so we really just use off-the-shelf tools for everything uh slack is our community so we still have the community okay it's a thousand plus members now that's for job boards we have hiring managers posting in there um all the coach communications like the asynchronous ones happen on slack between the fellow and their coach um and that's the community slack and then we have our team slack which is all our internal operations Notion is basically set up for all of the resources, all of the guides, all of the videos that are supplementary, all of the tools that we use, different AI search tools that we set our clients up with.

1:05:10And then we have our tracker in there for tracking jobs, et cetera. And then we also use it for internal operations as well, whether it's marketing or setting up a CRM for different objectives and KPIs for the month, that sort of thing. And then Google Drive for connecting with fellows. The coaches use that a lot.

1:05:32Hala Taha:In terms of like how your team is structured, when you raised that million dollars, did they take equity? Yeah. So we raised it on a safe note. Okay. What's that mean? So safe is a YC designed kind of tool or vehicle for collecting cash from angel investors. Okay. So it's basically a promise to give equity when there's a price drowned or something that would trigger an equity conversion. So you typically raise it on a cap. So it's either a pre-money valuation or a post-money valuation. So we raised it on a$10 million valuation cap. Okay. But it's not real equity yet. so we raised from angel investors and at the time we were building or planning to build a venture-backed business yeah and so those investors have kind of like that promise of like when we do convert the equity or when there's a price round their shares would convert into actual equity so you didn't pay them back yet so I wouldn't say we didn't pay them back yet we actually are in the process of converting all of our existing first investors into equity got it Yeah.

1:06:44So because...

1:06:45Hala Taha:And how much equity will you have to give up? It's about 20 % of our business. Got it. That's a lot. But you got a million dollars to start the business and that was helpful. Yeah. And you know, you always want to do right by your investors, especially like the first people that invested in you. For me, it's like the relationships are way more important than the money. So I'd rather give away more and like do right by our investors than like have them wondering like, hey, what happened to my money or that sort of thing. Now that you changed the business model, do you wish that you just bootstrapped it?

1:07:17Hala Taha:Because your cash flow. Yeah. I do, but I didn't. Here's the thing. We actually did something. So our business was going to fail in 2023. We were going to run out of money and we weren't going to be able to raise again. But that was where I was like, whatever we turned this business into, I wanted to really do right by our investors and the people that took a risk on us and like not make this just a failed business. Yeah. And so instead of just going back to them and saying, hey, sorry, the business failed and starting this other thing, which I really could have done, we didn't. And we turned Matchday into this business that it is now.

1:07:53Hala Taha:So you could have like folded the other company completely and then been like, sorry, guys, you took the risk. I'm out. But instead you didn't. So do you have to communicate anything to these investors? Do they have any sort of like say over anything or do you communicate them at a certain? To some degree, when they're angel investors and they're on a safe, they don't really have that kind of say. I did always put out quarterly investor updates, sharing how the business is doing, what's happening, where we're growing. And I still do that even now. But they don't really have a say because once you get to the seed stage or Series A and then they have a board seat, then that becomes a different story.

1:08:35and also you're taking on a lot more capital at that stage versus our stage was just individual angel investors.

1:08:42Hala Taha:All right, so we're going to do a SWOT analysis. Oh, no. All right. What do you think your biggest strengths are as a company right now? As a company, our biggest strengths are marketing and operations. So we have a very strong program, very high quality, high caliber coaches. So from a program fulfillment side, like we're super strong. And also from a marketing side of things, I think we've just done a really good job of establishing ourselves as like the leader in the space for career transitions. Speaking of success, what is your success rate for actually helping people get a job? So we track success over a six-month period.

1:09:27So within six months, 80-plus percent of our fellows will actually land a job. the average time to offer last quarter it was 88 days right now it's about 112 so slow down a bit because of the market slow down but we're also going into like September October which is peak hiring season so hopefully that number will speed up again too and in terms

1:09:50Hala Taha:of like capacity with your coaches like are you looking at it like we've got x amount of coaches we have this much capacity for clients and we're this much underfilled like how do how are you like monitoring your goals we have an update every single week so a weekly operations update and we kind of have a percentage of capacity so we have a percentage of capacity that kind of floats around so anytime we're above 70 we start thinking of hiring um when we're when we know we're ready to scale we'll start thinking about additional contractors we'll start interviewing and preparing for that process.

1:10:27But, you know, typically above 80 % is, that's kind of like yellow flag and above 90 is like, okay, we got to figure this out ASAP because we're bringing on new clients all the time. And so we might run out of capacity in that stage and we never want our fulfillment to be the bottleneck.

1:10:44Hala Taha:How much is your founder's story a strength at this point? Do you feel like it's grown beyond you? I think our business could do well without me. And I think it would probably do the same amount of revenue with or without me. Maybe, you know, for me, it's really been the trust factor because it's my story. Yeah. And it's just, you know, to establish the business and get it off the ground, it's really helped. But now I think Matchday carries its own weight. It's got social proof. It's got strong marketing, strong brand. We want to still kind of, you know, take the key, take me the key man out of risk out of the business.

1:11:21Like I want to run Matchday forever. I love the business. Uh, but I don't want to be the main risk to the business. If I ever can't do something or be, you know, doing the ads or anything like that, I don't want the business reliant on me or my personal brand. I really want it to stand on its own two legs.

1:11:37Hala Taha:Are you doing all the meta ads right now? Are you the face of it? Just, I'd say probably half of them. We hire UGC creators. My ads usually are the best performing. And I think it's, I think there's something about being the founder is that you just have the most conviction and people like can sense that. Yeah. And so that's part of it. And then I think just being a doctor also gives you credibility. And I say like, I say this, like my degree didn't go to complete waste, you know, the $400 ,000 degree. So now it helps me build trust with our audience, and that's worth something. All right, let's talk about weaknesses.

1:12:15Weaknesses. I want to say we don't have weaknesses, but of course we do. I'd say areas that we're improving are sales and getting better at having a strong sales team.

1:12:27Hala Taha:Like closing people from ads. Yeah. Because it's all calls. They book a call. Yeah, so they book a call with our, we call it our admissions team. and so there's a qualification call that's about 30 minutes and so that's the first kind of experience someone has with match day 30 minute call right now we have four full-time setters so they're available for the calls they're the first kind of like interaction someone has with match day and so we make sure we have a good first impression but also we're qualifying making sure this person is the right fit um for us we're a good fit for them and they're also financially qualified so we're not wasting their time or our time.

1:13:06And then we have the team that's like our closing team or admissions closers and they are really closing the deals and bringing in the revenue.

1:13:16Hala Taha:Are these international contractors? They're all U.S. based. They're all U.S. based that are doing that. Does that get expensive? No, they're all commission based. Commission based. Our set team gets a base. Our closers are all commission based and they do really well. Take a second to like walk through what that setup is like. Do you consider those people team members or are they kind of like, how does that work? I consider them a core part of our team. Okay. Yeah, because sales, and I think this is where a lot of people, I've seen like people outsource sales and I think that's a terrible idea.

1:13:48Sales is part of our culture because it's like the professionalism. It's like, you know, if you have a lousy salesperson and they're not showing up professionally and they're talking to your customers or not handling things appropriately, it makes your whole business look bad. So I consider them like an integral part of our team. I meet with them weekly, always going through coaching exercises or whatever. But we also have a sales manager. But to break it down, we have setters. And so these are the people setting the closing appointments. They're doing the 30-minute calls and we pay them a base.

1:14:22So they get a flat base, so$1 ,500 a month. And then they earn a commission of, could be between 5 % and 7 % per deal. and their OTE, you know, is around$4 ,000 to$7 ,000 a month.

1:14:36Hala Taha:And that was included in your customer acquisition cost. So it's the paid ads and the cost of the commission of sales. Not in our customer acquisition cost. Oh, no. So customer acquisition cost was just the paid ads? Just the paid ads, yeah. Yeah. Sales is 20 % of gross revenue. So that's a, you know, big line item. Why commission-based for sales? Why not just hire like a full-time salesperson that does everything? I think the industry, and I think a lot of people maybe know this as like high ticket coaching industry, high ticket sales industry. There's like, I don't know if you're familiar with like Shelby Sapp.

1:15:09I do, yeah. So there's a lot of people promoting this now and the whole industry is kind of trained on just being commission based. And, you know, for them, it's like they're able to make higher salaries if they're really good. And so most of them don't really want to be. salaried or anything like that.

1:15:31Hala Taha:They want to work on commission because it also gives them, they also make more money doing it that way. Okay. So that's a huge chunk of your cost is actually the sales and the commission that goes to the sales team. Now, what about the weakness of it being like coaches? Do you feel like that's scalable? I do feel like it's scalable. I feel like we could grow to, I mean, I think we could easily get to a million to$2 million a month business. I do think that's on the horizon for us. It might take us, you know, another two or three years to get there. But I think we're, we've set up the systems now to be able to scale.

1:16:07And so on the fulfillment side, like we definitely can scale. It's just a matter of having the right quality people and then having the right leadership in place to scale that team. So I'm not doing, obviously our program director does all the hiring, all the quality assurance. And when you hire really good people, you can scale. So that's just number one is like hire good people. Yeah.

1:16:28Hala Taha:And you have a good program. You said you spent a lot of time on the program. Yeah, exactly. And so, and we have a lot of systems in place on the fulfillment side. I'd say the bigger issue for scaling is just keeping our customer acquisition costs down. And then like we talked about increasing, like what are the other offers so that you can increase lifetime value of your customers? Yeah. So the first - Or just get more customers, like that's such a big volume that it doesn't matter. Yeah. I mean, my dream is, you know, for healthcare professionals is we can help them through the lifetime of their journey.

1:16:58And I think about it in a couple of ways. One, everybody in healthcare has student loan debt. So I think about how can we help them with coaching, handle their student loans, strategize, have financial advisement.

1:17:12Hala Taha:That's a great idea. after they actually, you know, land the job and are thinking about, okay, now how do I structure the rest of my life and career and financial responsibility? So that's something that I'm thinking about is like, how do we layer on services? Because what's unique about us is when someone comes in and works with us, the amount of trust and rapport that they have with their coach is actually just phenomenal. Like they want to go work with that coach forever. they want to be best friends with that coach they really have a lot of respect for them and that gives us kind of a privilege because now we have that relationship with them and because we delivered such an exceptional experience because we helped them get that next job they're going to trust us when we say hey we've got another program here we can help you with your student loans we can help you with you know whatever it is um something it could even be life insurance and disability.

1:18:07Hala Taha:What about like just life coaching? Like, hey, now that you got a job, like you can continue on with like monthly life coaching or something. I don't know. I don't know if you need certain qualifications for that, but. We've thought about it right now. So we do like a three-month extension for fellows if they want to do that at a like discounted price. If they didn't get a job yet. If they didn't get a job yet, we'll do like a three-month extension at like a very high, highly discounted price just to make sure we're supporting them until they get the job. And then we do offer a la carte as well for fellows that graduate.

1:18:41So after they finish the program, they can always book again with their coach for like one-off sessions, for promotions, things like that. They're always able to do that. So we do also generate a little bit of revenue that way as well, just now that we have more alumni. But I think there's still also a lot more opportunity where we can take that trust that we've built and provide more value for our customers.

1:19:05Hala Taha:How about the opportunities? Do you ever think about expanding beyond healthcare or like what are the different opportunities that you're thinking about? I think health tech is such a big opportunity, such a big industry. And our advantage is that we're so niche. I feel like, you know, really there's 10 million healthcare professionals. That's kind of how I think about our TAM. And what can we do to help more of them? The reason I started Matchday, like my mission, what really drives me right now, it's actually just helping people get that spark back. Because so many healthcare professionals, if you've seen them after a shift or even day to day, they're just...

1:19:47Hala Taha:They're exhausted and miserable. Yeah. They just look deprived of life. Yeah. Tired. I want people to have that kind of spark back in their life where they don't feel drained and hopeless and defeated. It's like they can show up and be present at home, be present with their families, be present in their communities. So, you know, we do that through helping them with their careers. That's one way to do it. There's probably lots of other ways too. But, you know, thinking about really the core demographic of healthcare professionals, that's who we want to serve. And thinking about more ways we can do that.

1:20:21Yeah.

1:20:21Hala Taha:So opportunities, your podcast, are you putting out new episodes or what's going on? Very minimally. That's something we want to do more of for sure. And I think it's like, I think maybe even just having on guests that have made the pivot or doing the next thing. I think that's our big next opportunity. It is because you could probably get so many leads from the podcast from professionals that are interested in that kind of stuff. And it can, it doesn't even have to be a huge audience because it could just be like your exact target audience. Okay, for threats, any competitors that you're worried about?

1:20:55Hala Taha:Does AI threaten you in any way? I don't really look at our competitors, honestly. I just try not to pay attention. You know, I think I see it in the sense that it's a good sign. When I start to see competitors, when we started doing this, like this model of Match Day two years ago, there's no one doing it. but I've started to see like independent career coaches pop up talking about this posting more on social media and actually I think it's a good thing yeah because you could just take their followers well they create more brand awareness about the non-clinical career pivot right and you know I think it's great I don't I don't think like I just for me like philosophically I just don't believe in like focusing on my competitors I just think if I just we just do what we do like Like, you know, the more the merrier.

1:21:45They can have a piece of the pie too if they want.

1:21:48Hala Taha:Any other threats that you can think of? You know, there's always the threats you have to be thinking about as a business owner. And like, you have to be a little paranoid. Yeah. Of like, you know, what could potentially put us out of business? And so meta going down, like that could be a huge threat because we have had a reliance on meta ads. And I think a lot of coaches and businesses like ours rely on meta. And that's why we've invested heavily in like building more organic presence, a referral system, ways that we don't have to have that reliance. And then just kind of the general economy, you know, $6 ,000 is an investment for a lot of people and the economy is good.

1:22:29People are willing to invest themselves to further their careers and growth. I think we're in a fairly safe industry because our demographic is healthcare and that's a stable field. It doesn't really, it's recession-proof in a sense.

1:22:43Hala Taha:Yep. And so I think we're okay there. But as a business owner, you just have to always be thinking about what things could hurt your business and be like life-threatening for your business. And, you know, I'm always keeping an eye out for those things. Some of the ways that you failed, because the best way to learn, guys, is from other people's failures. And I feel like we've learned so much in this interview already, but what was the biggest product or platform mistake inside of Matchday? What's the biggest mistake that you, with your product? Spending money on an agency to build us tech. Horrible use of funds, horrible decision.

1:23:21Should have never done that.

1:23:23Hala Taha:You're not in the tech business, right? So you basically entered into the tech business instead of just focusing on your core thing, which was coaching. And there's so many different platforms out there that are like specifically designed for coaching services. So what was your worst hiring decision? Worst hiring decision? Think about that because I don't. You feel like that's been strong? I feel like that's been pretty strong. We're really good at hiring and I think we let people go really quickly if it's obvious they're not a good fit. That's good. I don't think I've had too many bad hires. Maybe on the sales side, we have had bad sales hires.

1:24:02Hala Taha:Okay. And that was because we had a bad sales manager at the time. Like when you have C plus people or C people. Yeah, they're going to hire like other bad people. They're going to hire other bad people and they're a bad hire. One of the biggest mistakes I did early on. So when I first started my social media podcast agency, it blew up like right away, like month one and we were making six figures. And I had like essentially a team of interns. Like I didn't even have like, I was still working a full-time job at Disney and I had a team of interns and I was like letting the interns, this is a long time ago, I was letting the interns like hire people or like maybe we had just started paying people and I was letting those first employees like hire people without me even interviewing them.

1:24:43Hala Taha:And then suddenly we had like these horrible people on the team and that was a big mistake. And then I was like, okay, like I have to do all the hiring interviews, like no matter how now, you know, I've got people I trust, but back then it's like you got to make your first tires definitely yeah what cost did you underestimate the most I think the cost of entrepreneurship like you never really know what it's going to take to be an entrepreneur until you do it and you know I've you know I work 100 hours a week you know I thought I would have I was working a lot in residency but like I'm always in the business I've always got a pulse on it it doesn't feel like work to me because I enjoy it yeah and so it's easy in a sense but i work a lot it'll get better but yeah and and um so that's that's you know there has been definitely the the scares and the mental cost because you just to get it to the point where you're like outside of um liftoff like you're you've reached escape velocity you just have to like pour so much into it i feel like we're just getting at that point where we're reaching escape velocity and I'm able to like take a breath now.

1:25:52But it did take a lot to get it to that point.

1:25:56Hala Taha:What decision did you make too slowly? Firing toxic people. I thought you just said you fire really quick. And I do now. You do now. Lesson learned. I do now. There's, you know, maybe only like two scenarios where there was someone where I should have let them go sooner and not because they weren't a good, like they were excellent operators, but they weren't good team players. They didn't have the right attitude. People were afraid to go to them for things or weren't very approachable. And that just, it just ruins the dynamic and it creates stress for you and other people. And so like, if you have people like that on your team, even if they're amazing, you just got to let them go.

1:26:37Hala Taha:What's a founder habit that you think is holding match day back? Not doing enough content. yeah you gotta do more content yeah you started out in podcasting in 2017 your podcast could be huge right now if you were just consistent right so just get back to it start guessing on podcast start doing your podcast start chopping up clips from your podcast blowing it up well that's what you gotta do that's that's that's a really good point and um i don't know what it is like about just becoming an entrepreneur that just made me so much more introverted because i'm so in the business talking to people all the time yeah i feel like getting on camera and it's also like you have to switch your brain a little bit yeah and back when you were doing your podcast was it audio only it was audio only yeah now it's a whole different world yeah it's a different world getting on camera it is uh but you can do it i believe in you thank you okay so if somebody wants to copy this business any ideas of like people who are tuning in obviously not specifically your idea but lots of people do career pivots and lots of people need new careers yeah what are some ideas that you have for people or advice on how to copy your business?

1:27:44Yeah, I would say, you know, anytime you start a business, like the more authentic it is to you, the better that business is going to be. And so everybody has a story. Everyone has something that's happened in their life that they've overcome, that they've faced as a challenge, and they've learned how to navigate that. So in the coaching space, if you were to want to become a coach, if that's in what you want to be, you can build a business around that. You can help someone overcome a very specific challenge that you know better than most people. And so I would say for one is just be honest with yourself.

1:28:23Don't fall in love with some solution because you think it's cool. Fall in love with the problem. And that was the first mistake I made as an entrepreneur is I fell in love with a solution that wasn't even really for me. And when I came back to my roots and I became like went back to like integrity for me, everything fell into place. And so I really believe this is like the world's trying to unfold for you and it's like swimming downstream. You just have to let go and be in integrity and do the thing that feels right. And you can build a business out of that. Like you don't, I don't believe in like the world where you have to be icky or do the wrong things to be successful anymore.

1:29:04I think you can be in integrity and do something that is right for you and make a very successful business out of it.

1:29:12Hala Taha:That's beautiful. Well, Rami, thank you so much for joining us on How We Profit. This was such an amazing conversation. Thank you so much, Hala. And that's how Rami and Matchday profit. Every business has a hidden engine. And today we learned that Matchday is not simply selling career advice. It's selling transformation, a structured path for healthcare professionals who feel stuck in clinical practice and need the guidance, accountability, and network to move toward a new career with greater clarity and confidence. Thanks for listening to How We Profit Wednesdays, the Young and Profiting series where real entrepreneurs share real numbers, real margins, and the real story of how their businesses actually work.

1:29:49Hala Taha:I'm Hala Taha, and I'll see you next time.