Turn Content Creation Into Your Most Powerful Tool for Business Growth | Marketing | YAPCreator Replay | E4

22:53Hala Taha:You need to have the energy to execute them. When it comes to growing on social media and getting attention online, you've gotta be ready to receive it and you've gotta bring the right energy. First off, you need to believe in yourself as a person who is worthy of a following. And second, you need to be consistent in the vibes that you put off and what people can expect from your account. Nobody knows this better than TikTok and Instagram influencer Kat Norton, aka Miss XL. So how soon did things take off for you? Like, did you go viral right away? Did it take months, years? Like, what was it like for you?

23:30So the whole thing happened pretty quickly. And I do attribute a lot of that to the energetics that happened behind the scene where I was able to actually show up fully authentically in what I wanted to create and was ready to receive the attention back where normally I grew up with an anxiety disorder. I hated having any attention on me. Like I had to do a lot of overhauling to get to a spot where I wasn't going to subconsciously limit what was able to come into my field. So it was by the fourth video to that DMX song, X Gon' Give It To Ya, I did the X lookup function. and that one, it was so good.

24:07That one got 100 ,000 views right away. And I was like, oh my gosh, because this at the time was my secret TikTok account because I still had a corporate job. I wasn't really sure what I was allowed to do. So for me, I wasn't like, hey, everybody, you know, like my video. Only my mother and my boyfriend knew about this secret account, Miss Excel. So for me, when that video hit, it got shown to all these people I work with. It got shown to all these people. I know I'm getting all these messages like, is this you? And I'm like, oh, maybe, maybe it's me. And then within three weeks of that, I had my first video go viral on TikTok.

24:45And next thing you know, I looked down at my phone and within a couple of days, I had 100 ,000 followers. And that's where I was like, whoa, now what do I do? Because everything was going on in the news too at this time. This was like June, July of 2020, that TikTok's getting banned, you know, all the things. So I was like, well, I got to hedge my risk out here. I'm going to create an Instagram account. So I created an Instagram, started posting on there. And then within a few months, both accounts had gone viral various times. And we had a few hundred thousand followers across the different platforms.

25:17Hala Taha:That's so amazing. Like it's so rare to have somebody who just kind of skyrockets on social media right away. Why don't we stick on why you think that happened? You just alluded to the fact that you came on with really good energy and energy is really magnetic. So can you talk to us about the importance of ensuring that you have the right type of energy when you go film your videos? Absolutely. Because it's one of those things where I view content as simply an energy exchange. My energy is coming through to you on your phone or vice versa, and you are the recipient of that energy, right? So my job as a creator is I want my energy through the roof.

25:56I want it in its most heightened, sparkly, magnetic state. Because one, that's what's going to stop someone, right? Like think about a bunch of people walking down the street. If there is someone that is magnetic and like fully just, you know, pure joy and like happiness. And that was something I worked on myself too, to get myself to that place where like, that's the type of person and that's the type of energy where you're going to stop and be like, whoa, what's that person doing? Like, oh, why do I feel like attracted to them? Not in like a sexual way, but in like a, you know, like an energetic way.

26:25It's magnetism. And so that's something I was learning early on is practices I can do behind the scenes. And a lot of that was where the kundalini yoga came into play, doing like different yogic technologies and breath work and things where my aura would become bigger, my energy would become bigger. And that way it would kind of stop you on the phone. So whether it was like the polarity of the video, like I'm looking at Excel and a girl dancing at once, what is this? Or just the energy behind it, right? Like if I I looked really bored or like I was having a bad time. I wouldn't want to hang out.

26:55It's kind of like creating a little room with someone when you're watching a piece of content and you're like entering their room. It's like, do I want to go in that person's room? Like, you know, you want to make sure the energy's there. You're inviting and you're actually providing value. So that was something too, where I'd spend a lot of time researching the tips and tricks, making sure that one, people were learning, but two, also that we were having that entertainment factor because each video too can bring someone's energy up or down. So if you're watching dark things that are going to bring down your frequency, bring down your vibration, that's something that's, you know, going to create more negative feelings in the body.

27:29My job is I'm trying to lift that up on the planet, right? Like I want to make you smile. I want to make you laugh. I want to brighten your day in any possible way that I can. So that's where with my content, I need to make sure that I'm in a good spot before I go and actually make that piece because that energy translates every single time.

27:51Hala Taha:Of course, the tricky thing is figuring out the areas where you can add the most value. Somebody like Kat Norton had a clear expertise that she could share, her knowledge of Excel. But what if you don't already have such a large storehouse of knowledge on a particular topic or subject area? How much time and effort are actually required to develop meaningful competence in a field? Well, the road to mastery is not as long and hard as you may think. And it certainly doesn't take 10 ,000 hours. Here's James Altucher again, explaining why. What does it mean to master something and to get good at something?

28:25Well, a lot of people think you have to be the best in the world, or you have to be rich and famous at what you're doing to say that you've mastered it. So yes, I'm not a top 10 comedian or a top 10 chess player. And I think that's very hard to do. That's where the whole 10 ,000 hours or whatever comes in. But whatever I like to pursue, I like to think that I get into the top 1%. So I'll just use chess as an example. There's 600 million people around the world who know the rules to chess. Arguably, the top 1 % means you have to be in the top 6 million of those. Arguably, I'm in the top 1 million of those, or even better.

29:00But I consider myself not so good because looking at it from my perspective, there's a lot of people I know who are much better. Same things with business, with investing, with everything that I've pursued. But I do think it's relatively easy to get into the top 1 % of what you pursue. And there's a lot of benefits to that. One is every area of life worth pursuing has a strong and fun subculture. So you get to experiment being in all these different subcultures. There's like a comedy subculture, a writing subculture, a TV subculture, investing subculture. You get to kind of communicate with different people across the spectrum of all your very interests.

29:40And you get some status in those subcultures if you're in the top 1%. So I think it is relatively easy. And this is what I wrote the book, Skip the Line, about, is that it's not like cheating, but there are learning techniques you can use to be in the top 1%. Let's say you're interested in cooking. To be in the top 1 % of cooking, I mean, a billion people around the world or more know how to cook. To be in the top 1 % means to be in the top 10 million of those, that's very easy to do. It's not trivial, you have to work at it, but if you just use these methods, kids, you can do it.

30:14Hala Taha:Totally. This book, Skip the Line, gives so many great gems for entrepreneurs of how they can, you know, skip this line and get to the top 1 % of their field. And one of the first things that you talk about is you debunk the 10 ,000 hour rule. Now, all of us listening to this podcast, you've probably heard this rule a million times. It's from Malcolm Gladwell. But for those of us who maybe don't know about it, what is the 10 ,000 hour rule and why don't you like it. Sure. 10 ,000 hour rule is this idea. It originally comes from this guy, Anders Ericsson, who was a professor who did all the research for it.

30:48And basically he says with 10 ,000 hours of what he calls deliberate practice, you could be the best among the best in the world at anything. And he describes like how the Beatles had their 10 ,000 hours and he describes various experiments, you know, and Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this afterwards. And, um, Anders Ericsson wrote a book called Peak that I highly recommend. But my view is, is that he's just, so deliberate practice means do something and then study it. Like what did you do wrong? And then repeat, do study, repeat, do study, repeat. And you just do that for 10 ,000 hours. So that's really good for repetitive tasks, like maybe a golf swing or memorizing lists of numbers or, you know, very repetitive to some extent, music, musical performance, not that you perform the same way every time.

31:35But if you're playing the piano, you play the same notes for the Moonlight Sonata every single time. You don't change. So that's the 10 ,000 hour rule. But I much prefer what I call the 10 ,000 experiments rule, but it's really more like 100 or 200 experiments. And the whole point is, is that you should try to think of ways almost every day to experiment in your life. You know, I mentioned one, which was the, you know, running for president. The question was, Can anyone run for president? The theory was yes. And the proof is that I was able to do it. So that's like a scientific experiment. You have, you're curious about something, you come up with a theory and then you test that theory.

32:16All the time I'm doing experiments. When I was doing comedy, I would experiment all the time on the stage, different things I can do to get people to laugh. In business, you want to be able to experiment. Well, a lot of times you go into business, you think you're going to make money a certain way. But what if we, you know, charged as a service instead of as a product or as a product instead of a service? There's all sorts of things you can do to experiment in business to find the right combination of things that will make you a lot of money. So I view experiments as a really quick and valuable way to learn incredible amounts of information relatively quickly.

32:55Hala Taha:It's so true what James had to say about mastery. And again, the importance of experimentation. You may not have to spend 10 ,000 hours to become a content expert, but you do need to spend some serious time experimenting with different ideas to figure out what actually works. Of course, it's one thing to be an expert, and it's a whole other thing to know how to deliver that expertise to your potential audience. Kat Norton went viral not just because she could provide useful Excel tips, but also because she figured out how to get her audience attention and keep it. And this is where good marketing comes in.

33:28Hala Taha:Kelly Roach, the world-class performance coach, changed my whole approach to marketing when she shared with me her framework for building a conviction-based content brand. Let's move into your pyramid, if you wouldn't mind, because I feel like it's a good place to talk about it. So your pyramid is made up of three levels. The first level is how-to marketing, and then it's hope marketing and conviction marketing. So from my understanding, the how-to marketing is really the foundational piece that you got to start with to command credibility and authority. Talk to us about this how-to marketing and how to do it effectively.

34:03Yeah, absolutely. So how-to marketing is the most basic element of marketing, and it's typically the way that people enter your ecosystem. It's simple. It's easy to do. Anyone can do it. It costs you nothing. Record a quick video on your iPhone. Pop it on your stories. Pop it on your page. Share it across different profiles. Boom. You're doing how-to marketing. This is literally a transfer of knowledge. It's where I'm showing you, hey, Hala, I know how to do something that I know you're interested in doing. I'm going to be your teacher. So all of a sudden, Hala watches my video. She spent two minutes with me.

34:35She's like, damn, I like this girl. She just taught me how to do something I didn't know how to do. All of a sudden, she's like, cool. Okay, this is someone that I like. This is someone I trust. You know, whatever the case. So how-to marketing serves a really important purpose because when people are scanning the airwaves and when they're looking for new accounts to follow and they're looking for new people to learn from. They want quick, digestible incentives. The problem is that's where most people stop. Now, the problem with this is just like people are scanning the airwaves looking for a quick, easy, actionable tip, they're doing that all day, every day.

35:06It's called escapism, right? That's why people go online and scroll and scroll and scroll. It's escapism. So it's kind of like you got the girl, she said yes to the date, and now you're like, cool, I already had a date with that girl. Let me see. Oh, she's really tuned over there, right? And then someone, right? So the problem with how-to marketing is it's a great way to get people in your ecosystem. It's not a great way to keep them. And we have to remember, what's the purpose of marketing? The purpose of marketing is to attract so that you can nurture and finally convert people into paying customers.

35:39Well, if you miss this middle section of nurture, they never make it over here to conversion. And that's what's happening to a lot of marketers. They pump out this how-to marketing. And this is, you know, a lot of people are doing their pointing and their dancing and, you know, their lip syncing and all of those things. And that's fine. Do you have a way to then bring them through that process and finally get them to convert? Okay. So how to get some in, it doesn't keep them there. We want you to not just do how to, but we want to elevate from, okay, I see you as a credible teacher. I see you as an authority.

36:14Wonderful. fold. Now let's elevate. Let's figure out how are we going to get people to keep coming back. Well, if you notice in the conversation that we're having here today, Hala, we talked a lot about stories, right? We talked a lot about experiences that I had, experiences that you had, ways that we resonate with each other. We talked about failure. We talked about setbacks. We talked about patience and sacrifice. What did we just do? Bring out emotions. Exactly. So the people that are experiencing this show are going to say, you know what? I've only been working at that goal for a year. I think I can keep going.

36:51Kelly kept going. Paula kept going. They both won these wildly successful companies now. Maybe there's nothing wrong with me that I wasn't an overnight success in six months. Maybe if I stick with it, I am going to achieve my goals after all. Okay, now we're on to something. And this is why, of course, podcasting is so powerful. It's such an amazing medium for home marketing. So hope marketing is the biggest chunk of your pyramid. And this is where you really connect with your audience in an emotional and a sensitive way where people are like, you're not just a teacher. You're not just an authority figure.

37:25You are my friend. You are my candidat. You are my cheerleader. You are the person that has been in my shoes. You understand everything that I've gone through. You understand everything I'm going through now. And you cross the bridge to the other side. So hope marketing is really about reaching down and grabbing your audience and like wrapping your arms around them and saying like, no, you're not quitting. You're coming with me on this journey. I'm going to support you every step of the way. I've been there. You can get there too. And hope marketing is really what's going to keep people coming.

37:56I call it like the sweetness factor of your brand. It's the thing that really makes people feel deeply connected to you as a person, not just as a marketer that can give instruction, but as a human being that has feelings, that has emotion, that's been through some things.

38:13Hala Taha:Oh my gosh, totally makes sense. And I can attest to this. I mean, when I go on a podcast, for example, and share my story, that's when I get all these people like, you know, hitting me up, asking to do business with me and things like that, because they feel so emotionally connected. They could see any sort of PowerPoint slides about my results or whatever, but that wouldn't seal the deal. It's about liking the person and feeling connected with the person that you want to work with, which is so key. So what are some other actionable ways that we can bring this emotion to our branding aside from the obvious ones, which is like social media posts and, you know, having a podcast where you tell your personal stories?

38:49For me, a lot of times, even when I do like Instagram stories or Facebook stories, like I'm literally just giving like encouragement. It's encouragement. It's, you know, it's sharing mistakes. It's sharing setbacks that you work through. I think one of the things that's most endearing when you're a teacher that, you know, wants people to want to work with you is not when you just show your highlight reel of all of your greatness and all of your wonderful accomplishments, but instead when you say, listen, I failed at this and I failed at this and I failed at this, and this is what I learned from it, and this is who I became, and this is why I'm successful today.

39:22And these are all the things that you can skip over that you don't have to go through because I did and I'm going to tell you what to do instead. So I think it can be in podcasts, It can be in live streams. It can be in videos. It can be in emails. It can be in posts on social media, stories, right? It can be from the stage. It can be from behind the microphone, anywhere that you connect with your audience. But the bottom line is it's going from transaction, which is non-emotional and it doesn't have staying power, to relational, which now is what creates that desire, that stickiness factor and the brand for people to want to stay with you.

39:59Hala Taha:And then I think there's another mistake that people make in all this is just focusing on hope marketing alone and not doing any of the informational how to stuff. Amen. And that's why I wanted to actually give the illustration and the exercise in the book about the pyramid, because it's not about swinging the pendulum from one side to the other. It's about understanding how these things work together. There's so many people that it's like their entire brand is just sloth. and say, what do you even do? Like, get out of my feet. Like, why are you even here? Like, what is this? I don't understand what the context of this soft, like, just fluff is all the time.

40:39So I completely agree with you. Like, there has to be an intelligence to your brand. Like, what is it that you teach? What is it that you do? There's a lot of people that go so deep in the wrong direction that literally you don't even know what their business is, right? If I go to your social media and I don't even understand what your offer is, what your business is, what it is that you do. Like, that's a problem. So again, the pyramid is about, you know, think about it like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You work your way through the pyramid. You don't say, oh, I'm going to pull out this one piece of the pyramid and that's going to make me happy and fulfilled.

41:16No, each of the pieces of the pyramid go together. Let's hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.

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41:59Hala Taha:Now, my business partners have been obsessed with Huel for years. One of my business partners actually used to only eat Huel for two meals of the day, and then he'd have a real dinner. And at first, I thought it was crazy, and I was scared that Huel wouldn't taste good, but it actually tastes really good. So now I'm on the bandwagon to Huel has become my breakfast routine. I love their daily greens. So I get my protein from the Black Edition ready to drink. I get my greens from the daily greens. And Huel has got me covered. Consistency and consistent nutrition does not have to be complicated. And Huel makes it stupidly simple.

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42:52Hala Taha:Young Improfitters, let me ask you something. Have you ever missed an opportunity from a potential client and felt that drop in your stomach? I know I have far too many times. When my business first started scaling, calls were going to one person, texts were going to another, and opportunities kept slipping through the cracks. That's why we switched to Quo, spelled Q-U-O. Quo gives your team one shared business number, like a shared inbox. Every call and text is in one place. Everyone sees the history. No more pointing fingers than I thought you handled it going on. Plus, the AI logs calls, summarizes them, and flags next steps so nothing ever gets missed.

43:29Hala Taha:Growing teams everywhere are upgrading to systems like this because once you scale, your old setup just doesn't work anymore. If you're serious about building a real company, this is a foundational move. Make this a year 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. Again, that's Quo.com slash profiting. Quo. No missed calls. No missed customers.

44:01Hala Taha:What's up, young and profiterers? We're still at the start of a new year, and you know what that means. New goals, new ideas, and maybe that little voice in your head saying, this is the year that I finally start my business. But let's be real, the what-ifs show up fast. What if I fail? What if this is the wrong move? I've been there, and what I learned is that it makes a huge difference when you have the right partner from day one. And the hardest part is starting. For many entrepreneurs, that partner is Shopify. Shopify is an all-in-one commerce platform that helps you build, run, and grow your business.

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45:15Hala Taha:That's shopify.com slash profiting. One more thing about how-to marketing that I think is important. If you're going to do how-to marketing, isn't it true that you should really focus on a couple things and not just do like how-to's about everything in your industry because then nobody's going to know what you're really about? Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. I mean, this lack of patience is the number one saboteur for small business owners. I see so many businesses that one day they're marketing this, and then the next day you see them marketing something that has nothing to do with that other thing.

45:50And you're like, now you're expert of nothing. You're literally expert of nothing. The more that you keep changing your messaging over and over and over again, we'll talk about this also with the conviction, the top of the pyramid, but you keep changing what you're talking about all the time and you're doing how-to marketing on things that have nothing to do with the core anchors of your brand, of course that's going to create a confused mind and a confused mind always says no.

46:18Hala Taha:Kelly Roach emphasized the importance of emotion when it comes to creating content that resonates with an audience. Now, not every part of your content is going to evoke an emotional reaction and that's totally okay. The key is to find those moments that naturally hold an emotional pull. This might be a story about a challenge you faced, a moment of vulnerability, or even a small victory. At Yap, some of our best performing clips are the ones that highlight these emotionally charged moments, whether I share or my guest shares something deeply personal. These are moments that stick with people and prompt them to engage.

46:52Hala Taha:So how can we get better at identifying these key emotional moments in our content? Well, you can start by looking for universal human experiences within your content. The challenges, the personal victories, the authentic struggles. Sometimes it's not even the words themselves, but the way that these words are expressed. A genuine laugh, a reflective pause, a sigh, a tear. These seemingly small cues can carry a lot of emotional weight. They're signals to your audience that they're witnessing something real. One exercise to help identify these moments is to watch your content without sound or read the transcript without any preconceived notions.

47:29Hala Taha:Look for parts that convey genuine emotion. Pay attention to body language, facial expressions, or tone shifts. These are often the unscripted real moments that connect most deeply with your audience. All right, guys, we're almost at the end of another Yap Creator episode. So far, we've talked about how experimentation, energy, and the right tools can help you establish your expertise and launch yourself as a content creator and online presence. But I wanted to leave you on an even higher note, which I hope will light a fire under you to get started. And here it is. You're living at one of the best moments in history to be an entrepreneur and a content creator.

48:06Hala Taha:New technologies and platforms have completely democratized content creation and distribution as never before, allowing individuals and small businesses to build powerful online presences and without a massive corporate budget. Well, I'll get off my soapbox and let Gary Vee take it from here. In terms of entrepreneurs and your marketing advertising framework, your day trading attention, how can they use this to compete with the big dogs, the Fortune 500 companies? It's the first time we can. You know, because for the first time ever, the creative is the variable of the reach. And that's marketing jargon, so let me say it again.

48:46And for the first time ever, how good your picture or video is can lead to millions of people seeing it that never existed before. In the history of time, you'd have to be on television or on the biggest magazine or newspaper to ever get a million people in America or the world to know anything. And you'd have to spend millions of dollars for that. Now, every day, we all know, every day that happens to somebody. Now, what we've also learned is just because you go viral once doesn't mean you're going to be a billionaire. It usually means that you're going to have this moment that you refer to your whole life and you're actually actually be sad six months later because you weren't able to capitalize it that goes into being a real entrepreneur but for the first time ever entrepreneurs you have a fighting chance ember chamberlain's coffee can compete with folgers charlie d 'amelio's popcorn can compete logan paul and ksi's energy drink is really competing mr beast's chocolate is really competing and they're the preview not the anomaly i started a wine brand and sold it to consolation for tens and tens of millions of dollars because I made organic content on the internet about wine and then started a wine brand.

49:51That will be a very normal occurrence for a long time.

49:54Hala Taha:Now, if that doesn't get you fired up about content creation, I don't know what will. Thanks for joining me for episode four of the Yap Creator series. And I hope you found some useful tips to apply to your own content journey. And I can't wait for episode five, where we continue to unlock the secrets of content creation. Until next time, this is your host, Halataha, a.k.a. the Podcast Princess, signing off.