Quote: “If you’re thinking ten years out, you want searchable content that can work for itself over the years.” Fahd Alhattab
How is your speaking business running? Are you happy with the systems you have in place, or could they use some improvement? We’re continuously looking to scale and create best practices to help enhance the bottom line, but how do we get there? On this episode of The Wealthy Speaker Show, I am happy to welcome my client and start-up expert, Fahd Alhattab to share some of his thoughts on how to utilize your content and take your business to the next level.
A former at-risk immigrant child turned leader and entrepreneur. Fahd Alhattab is a reputable figure in the field of leadership development, motivational speaking, and social innovation, and he’s on a mission to enable others to drive change. In his pursuit to move others, Fahd founded a camp for underprivileged children in Ottawa, raised more than a combined 1.2 million dollars for local charities, and spoke at National We Day in front of an audience of 16,000 people. His savvy skills and team spirit landed him Canada’s Top 20 Under 20 Award when he was 19 years old. He completed two terms as the President of Carleton University Students’ Association where he represented more than 25,000 students to all levels of government. Additionally, he successfully managed a team of 150 staff and a nine-million-dollar budget for four businesses and 12 service and resource centres.
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Jane Atkinson: Well welcome everyone to the wealthy speaker. Podcast. I'm. Excited to talk to you about
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Jane Atkinson: success and growing up business, and we have one of my clients here with me today. Fahad! Um! We want to talk about marketing initiatives. Welcome back! I'm so happy to have you on the show.
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Fahd Alhattab: Thanks, Jane for having me. I'm really excited.
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Jane Atkinson: Did I get your name right?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, you're not it right? We got it right. I've also been a big listener of the show, so i'm excited to be on it as we'll be. This will be fine. I can imagine that when you are giving out your introduction to people that you probably need to sell everything thematically, just to make sure that they get it correct. But tell everybody about your existing business model. Who do you help? And what are all the revenue?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, definitely. Um. So I mean, our business is called unicorn labs. And fundamentally, what we do is we help. We help startups, unlock their talent potential. And and how we do that as we transform managers into leaders that create
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Fahd Alhattab: high-performing teams, teams that help these businesses scale ultimately. And so we live in the space of learning and development leadership development for these managers. And so, naturally our our work takes on a few different forms, our our main bread and butters. We've got a a leadership training program. It's a twelve week intensive program that we take our managers through, and it's teaching them everything from You know how to think like an entrepreneurial leadership, because entrepreneurship looks different at a startup,
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Fahd Alhattab: but also how to create high-performing teams in the environment, what sort of environment you need to create, but also who you need to become in the process. Um. And so our program is our better. But our program's got an online course with coaching support with assessments and templates. That's that's really where we spend the majority of our time. In addition. In addition to that, you know, we offer some upgrades where you get some one on one coaching for key individuals. We do workshops and keynotes for those companies also, where, if they're having a big learning day, we come and join them.
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Fahd Alhattab: We run off-site You know this is one that was kind of fun we we've been doing. Team building retreats has been something that has just been a lot of demand from a lot of our companies who want who are fully remote and want to bring their companies together, and they want to do it intentionally where they're really building teams, and they're thinking about the environment they're creating. So it's definitely taken on different shapes. But that core idea of helping. You know, managers become leaders that create high performing teams that allow businesses to scale is really the space that we're in.
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Fahd Alhattab: Oh, good! And this is why I wanted to talk to you today, because I really do think as you can hear listeners. He knows his stuff,
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Jane Atkinson: what he speaks. Ah, but I want to take us back to the beginning. You're Canadian, I'm Canadian. You had a little bit of an auspicious beginning here in Canada. Talk about your Where did you come from and talk about your family's arrival on the scene in
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, um, you know. So
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Fahd Alhattab: my family's mixed ancestry between Kuwait and Iraq, and after the the first Gulf war in nineteen ninety, when Iraq invaded Kuwait it created quite a complication for our family. Um years of trying to figure out where what place was next for us Canada, you know we came in Canada in one thousand nine hundred and ninety, eight, October thirtieth, and I recall arriving, i'm tell you, quite hot. Equated species is a high country where in October thirtieth. It was
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Fahd Alhattab: like, I just remember it just so vividly. We arrived. I always say, I think my dad chose the the cheapest possible flight, because it took us like forever to. Actually, we were ever really late on October thirty. If we got home we just just like slept that first night, woke up the next day, and we're unpacking all our stuff, and I remember I went to my older brother, and I was like, Hey, we should go check out
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Fahd Alhattab: Canada like we're in Canada. We can check out the neighborhood, Go, walk around. Older Brother was being responsible. He's like, Why, we gotta we gotta unpack our stuff first. We gotta go all stuff.
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Fahd Alhattab: So I rally the troops like I'm from a big family, and i'm one of six. I go to my sisters and I's guys, we should go and check out the neighborhood. They're like no facts. We gotta. We gotta to clean up because the new place we're on back all our stuff, so it takes me a while to rally all the troops. It's about like three, four, P. M. And i'm like, Hey, we're gonna go, and I got all my siblings together, My mom and dad like where you guys going? Oh, we're going. We're going. We're going out. We're going to check out the neighborhood. They're like, hey, what? We're gonna come at this point. It's like five P. M. It's getting a bit dark, and we all walk out,
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Fahd Alhattab: and all we see are little ghosts and goblins running around, knocking on people's doors.
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Fahd Alhattab: It was. It was Halloween. But, like
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Fahd Alhattab: I'm telling you, we had no idea. I mean one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight like unit you weren't on the Internet like you. There was no globalization. You just didn't know. This was a thing we walk out, and I'm telling you. Terrified, I turned to my older brother, and I was like, what,
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Fahd Alhattab: what, what countries, what is this. What they do is this what Canadians do at night like they just my mom turned to my dad. It was like, What devil worship is this right.
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Fahd Alhattab: Ah! We ran back to the house and and just shut the door. We were afraid, called my uncle, the only other family that we had here, and he was just laughing hysterically on the phone, saying, This is something they do every year. My mom was still on this. This is devil worship. I can't do this. The next day we're literally peaking out the window at five Pm. To make sure it is not happening.
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Fahd Alhattab: I love that. That is your kind of welcome to Canada,
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Jane Atkinson: and I love that you arrived here, and that you have been just kind of doing so well and thriving in this environment. How did you even get into speaking?
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Fahd Alhattab: That's a that's a great question. Um!
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Fahd Alhattab: So the the the story for me starts with a project that me and my friends started while we were in high school we were in high school. Um, A friend of mine, who I was in elementary school with. We grew up in. We grew up in in Vanier, of Ottawa, so I mean, coming as as newcomers to Canada. We were in low, low income housing. Our school was typically social economics, school status, and they're just, you know, a lot of challenges in our in our neighborhood. When we went to elementary school, and during graduation our Prince
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Fahd Alhattab: had challenged us to kind of come back to the community and help us. Kids help out the families, you know. So with a nice word, and it nothing ever that I stood out to me. But I mentioned that because in grade twelve it really has stood out to my friend, who recall that experience. I mean. He called me up and said, Fad, I want to try and do a camp, a march break camp for kids in our community who grew up. I told him he was crazy, and that nobody was going to give us their children because we're kids
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Fahd Alhattab: of of high schools now. And so we started this camp, having no idea what we were doing out of the school. We we couldn't even sign the legal paper, so we were both seventeen years old. We had a friend who was eighteen like. We had no idea we had to fundraise money through bake sales and car washes to try and afford to run a camp. We ran this camp during our trade for twenty kids, and it was the beginning of my leadership journey, but I would continue to do it while I was in high school in the last year of high school, and then through all my time in university, and
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Fahd Alhattab: how it kind of got going was was in first-year university. My teacher from high school said, Oh, you you want to share a little bit what you're doing with a camp to like the students, And I said, Yeah, sure, I can come. So I went and spoke to our students, and every year I would go back to my own high school and recruit some volunteers for the camp that you started,
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Fahd Alhattab: and so I was just going around just talking about, hey? We did this camp, we did this project this how it's working There's what you should do like. We identified something we cared about our community and like, listen. We had no idea what we were doing. Honestly, I didn't even think it was gonna work. But like we just put one step forward after another, and like you'd be surprised. Actually, a lot of adults were willing to help us and like it was just this fun story. And then I think i'm in like Third Year University, and my brother's guidance Count, my older older brother's got his counselor, my older brother's no longer in school, but you know I stayed connected with him,
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Fahd Alhattab: called me and said, Hey, I got your phone number from your brother, and I wanted to ask you to come. Speak to all our grade twelve, and I was like sure. Come on, that'll be funny. How much do you charge?
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Fahd Alhattab: What do you mean? What do you mean? How much do I charge
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Fahd Alhattab: It's a wow like I.
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Fahd Alhattab: It's like I pay speakers to do this. I'm like I don't know I work out at the time I was working at a local community center. So I was like I get paid twelve dollars an hour or eleven dollars an hour. I was like, Are you having me come out for an hour. I probably need two hours of prep, so i'm like what fifty bucks like. I like it. I genuinely No idea, really nice guy, you kind of chuck those last, and says I, I want you to go think about it, and then get back to.
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Fahd Alhattab: I have no mentors in this space. I have no idea, so I call him the next, and I said, Listen That I don't know. But if you think fifty bucks was low, like maybe one hundred bucks, and he's like I paid my last speaker like seven hundred and fifty dollars, and I think you're that quality. I've seen you speak. But would would you like me to pay you that? And i'm like That's seven hundred? I'm sitting there calculating, how much am I getting paid per second. I'm used to getting paid hourly minimum wage here. Why, why are you valuing what i'm doing
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Fahd Alhattab: here so much? Now you know. Part of it is. I've always kind of grew up speaking, and like doing public speaking, and and been an environment where, even with community centers, I was doing fundraising. So I had a bit of a natural talent for kind of storytelling and speaking, and honestly, I was just having fun up there. I would tell jokes, and I was so close to the to the youth. I was three years older than them, so I was just the older brother coming in and saying, listen. This is what University is going to be all about. And here's how you could do well. And and it was just so real that I think the message really landed over and over again,
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Fahd Alhattab: and that's that's kind of what keeps it off. And I I was able to speak at, I mean, before before the the current dismantling of we and we day I I I spoke at when I spoke at we in front of sixteen thousand, like great aids, and and you know that was an experience that was the coolest thing ever. And I got to just share about what we did with the camp and how, and that's the story that find a problem in your community and try and solve it. And you know you'll figure it out along the way, and there's going to be some amazing people who help
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Fahd Alhattab: awesome. And I love that. I love it. That's your kind of origin story for speaking, and I also love the part of what?
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Jane Atkinson: Where? You're ten times in everything and beyond. And I love that. And you've got quite a thriving business.
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Jane Atkinson: How important was it for you to identify, not just your money, because you did get your laying down pretty quick, but also your target market. You have been kind of going after this one space. Talk about that a little bit.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, You know it it. I guess it was. It was interesting because i'll tell you what you know I was. I was doing leadership development for high school and university students in this kind of education space. Right?
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Fahd Alhattab: How do you find the leader within you. How do you be effective in your community? A lot of what we call feel good leadership, a lot of inspirational leadership, those kind of talks and and really owning your own life. And I was I was interested in getting into the leadership space.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, incorporate. But I was like, I remember talking to a group in a little mastermind, and I mentioned that, and two people kind of chuckle, and they're like You're young leadership. What do you know? And I like you right. What do What do I know if i'm teaching a You know, a corporate? Ibm leadership? I'm like, I know what my generation needs in leadership, because, as I was, I was president of my high school. I was president of the Student Union at my University like I played, and you know That's an eight million dollars.
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Fahd Alhattab: Ah organization representing twenty five thousand students. I play these leadership roles, and I thought I had certain insights, and I was going around the education space. It kind of fell into my lot because I had spent a few years in the startup tech space. I had my own technology a startup. Um, Frank, as a phone. It was a little bit of a messy one trying to figure out how to bring a certain mobile technology to Canada. Um. I spent a few years working for different startups in kind of marketing business
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Fahd Alhattab: while I was doing the youth speaking stuff, because I mean often when speakers are getting going they have other gigs and other jobs, right, especially like in the youth space. You know, it was one thousand dollars a gig, maybe one thousand five hundred dollars a kid right in there, and it wasn't until
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Fahd Alhattab: you know years into kind of work in the tech space. One of my fellow friends, who was a Ceo of his company, was like, I'm having all these problems with my team.
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Fahd Alhattab: They're like, i'm spending more time managing the team dynamics, personalities here at work than than like actually moving to business for. And it was just over lunch. And I was like, yeah, like. And we tried this, and we tried that. We talked about a few things, and he found it extremely valuable, and he said, Well, are you willing to come to a company and do like a little workshop. I said, Yeah, sure. I'm going. And and i'm like I don't really have material for this. I'm like It's It's the same material I use for like education. He's like No, no, just try it out, but it's an hour like, you know. I'll get the team together. We already do our Friday social like.
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Fahd Alhattab: It'll be a good time. A fun time to do it. And I went in, and I did the workshop, and they absolutely loved it, and it solidified for me that
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Fahd Alhattab: okay, there is
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Fahd Alhattab: a space here in interact with with with our startups, because our startups have young energy that are trying to move really quickly and and intend to be a little nesting. And you've got to be willing to embrace the mess because you're not going to leave, and you're not. You're not trying to create a bureaucracy. You're not trying to create too many systems. You're trying to create some level of messiness. But yeah, you've got to find how to create high-performing teams with really young passionate talent that can be fired.
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Fahd Alhattab: And so then I just started like reading about it, learning about it, attending conferences, and just doing a whole bunch of stuff for free, just like while i'm doing my youth education up helping All these different startups have a network of people that I already knew, helping with teams, doing some coaching, showing up to their team or treats, and facilitating some stuff, something I was already doing for a different market, but learning to tweak it and advance it. And then I started to die really into organizational psychology and married the two. And and that's
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Fahd Alhattab: really how it it came to be. I think it was a a marriage of There's not a lot of people that focus on this at all in the startup world as soon as I get on a call with a company. And I say, they say, Oh, well, there's a lot of leadership.
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Fahd Alhattab: What makes you unique, I say? Well, we primarily focus with high-grow startups. Immediately. Their eyes open up and say, Yeah, you're right. I don't. I don't know anyone else that does that.
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Fahd Alhattab: So Yeah, that that's where we're interested in in the company gone,
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Jane Atkinson: And the reason why it's so perfect is because you're young, and the people they're leading are young, and it's like, of course. Why wouldn't we listen to this guy? So The fact is that you've got this amazing credibility. Ah, in that space, and I love that you bought some books,
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Jane Atkinson: and I really do believe that that's why things are so crazy for you. So okay, let's kind of break down a few things that you think have been game changers for you and your business. Now I know you have a lot of systems. You're really really good at analytics, and you're really really good at tea.
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Jane Atkinson: Um! One of those three, do you think has been the biggest game changer?
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Fahd Alhattab: That's actually a good question.
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Fahd Alhattab: So I I don't know if I would have answered it this way
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Fahd Alhattab: any any sooner than maybe in the last few months. But I think the biggest game changer was the team. Um, I think I got a team. Some people would say that I hired a team early, because I I I always laugh at this with a lot of fellow speakers or trainers, I say, might bring in more revenue. But my margins aren't as great as you think, because I have a big team, because I I know that
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Fahd Alhattab: I need to build a team that's going to help me build the bigger business where i'm trying to get you. And and you know I I have this. I have this thing on my wall. I wish they built for two thousand and thirty right like I'm. I'm. You know those who are winning today
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Fahd Alhattab: for building in two thousand and ten, and and and so those who are going to be winning in two thousand and thirty have been building for ten years, plus and putting their systems in place. So I really took a very long-term approach, and I heard a team. Now the team helped me hone in on my zone of genius,
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Fahd Alhattab: right like, What am I really good at? And And I would say, if you figure out what you're really good at, you should micromanage the heck out of that like really dive into it. Micromanage the whole process for that.
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Fahd Alhattab: Then other things really let go of it, and that's allowed me to have the creative space to build programs. It's allowed me to play with marketing because I realized actually, i'm really good at marketing when I when I take the time for it, but I wasn't taking the time for it Um! And it, and it allowed me to to to really spend time building the team, too, which in itself takes a certain amount of effort and time to create a high-performance team
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Fahd Alhattab: absolutely, and one of the things that you've done really well is you've solved the problem first, and then hired team to to implement the solution. You didn't say i'm not getting enough bookings. You're hired. Go, do it. Give me more.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, Actually, you have figured out how to do it yourself first, and then you hired someone to help kind of build it and grow it and build a funnel up.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, yeah, I And I think that's so important. And And I think there's there's um. There's an argument to be made for hiring agencies that have specialty that can help solve a problem. And then there's an argument to be made for having a staff in-house that once the problem solves
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Fahd Alhattab: ups operated often. We want junior talent to solve complex problems, and you know, or like, or some people often with Speaker. Why, I want someone who can sell for me like. Think about how good you are selling. Because you're a speaker. You are probably worth one hundred and fifty grand in another sales company. So, unless you're going to buy one hundred and fifty grand worth of talent to bring over you're actually lowering The skill set here right like your skill in selling is still better. You can have someone that can that can set the ball up that can set the meetings up that
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Fahd Alhattab: that can make sure they're more available than you to get the ball rolling. But at the end of the day you hit the home runs because of how valuable your talent is right.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. So so that was it. So So our team, our team grew, and and also I was willing to take junior talent like we use a lot of student grants, you know. Students come in and we give them specific projects like You're just gonna work on walls. They're just gonna help us create really good blogs that are seo efficient. Okay, that's it. One student, fifteen hours, twenty hours a week. They're just doing one thing. I'm trying to do a million things we get that student in. They're having fun. They're learning. We're learning with them next, you know, and and we got students to help us with with our Tiktok and our social media, or we get students to help us with
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Fahd Alhattab: um. Ah, we we were doing a ton of video editing right? We needed to launch our course. We got a student from Waterloo who knew how to edit the video, and and we're giving student grants to help subsidize it in the government. And and so we've got a team of four or five six people kind of moving along, and really they start to own the business, and it's amazing when they're calling me out on. Should I need to get better at? And that's when I realized like the business has got a team now, because it's not just me trying to push the vote forward.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. And the second thing I think that it really needs to be amplified is the fact that you're actually stepping fully into your own leadership role while teaching it to others, and who can take your own medicine?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah,
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Jane Atkinson: it walked your talk in this regard, and I think that's very powerful. And I think that that's something that even if you have a team of part-time
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Jane Atkinson: subcontractors, people who just bill you every once in a while. I think you really want to be a leader to that team. Make sure that they know what the vision is on a regular basis and make sure that you're coming together as a team to move that vision forward.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah,
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Jane Atkinson: you're
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Fahd Alhattab: I really love your energy because i'm thinking to myself, he's got the hustle, the hustle, and I had the hustle. What I mean. I've been in this business for over thirty years, and so I want you to just like, touch me, and
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Jane Atkinson: of your energy and all of the ideas and what you have moving forward I feel like i'm kind of in the twilight of my career, and i'm starting to like this book. The next book is the last book in the trilogy.
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Fahd Alhattab: More books.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah. So, Anyway, I love it.
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Fahd Alhattab: Oh, we're all we're all learning from you. We're we're learning from the the the path that you've paved, and and we stand on the shoulders of the giants that have come before us in this industry. Right like it allows us to to to really move forward and lead forward to the lessons that we ah, we take
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Fahd Alhattab: but this idea of building for two thousand and thirty is so powerful because eight years out, what are you doing in eight years.
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Jane Atkinson: This is our question for our listeners. What are you doing in eight years? What is your plan? And I love that? This is your part that you're gonna have a pretty large team. Okay, So let's talk about some of the things that you think you might have been able to avoid or do differently. Had you known
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Jane Atkinson: what you know now,
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Jane Atkinson: what are some things that you would have been like, Yeah, I would have not partnered with that person or anything that you did that you regret?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. Great great question. Um.
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Fahd Alhattab: So when I think of i'm gonna go, i'm gonna go. You mean with team wise or we want to get into marketing. Yeah,
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Fahd Alhattab: so i'll get it. I'll get into marketing framework, and then i'll tell you. I guess some of the the pieces that we really learned, because I've spent almost one hundred and eighty two hundred grand in marketing this last year, like just doing like ads and agencies and just tests. So i'll give you some of the lessons we've learned from all those tests, because here's here's some expensive lessons.
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Fahd Alhattab: So So um I for marketing. I always think of marketing in three buckets. So then, that way the like kind of list is kind of all. So marketing you. You have seeds, your nets, and you have skiers, Seeds are your content marketing and stuff that you put out there, and you're You're nurturing over long periods of time, right? Like we know plants take two, three, four years to really Blossom. So seeds are really long-term things that you just put out there, and and they might catch something. Nets are kind of specific, but they're a little bit of the spray and prey techniques. Sometimes they're next
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Fahd Alhattab: that could be ads. Nets could be email campaigns. They're kind of you're putting out a net. You're trying to catch a whole bunch of fish at the same time, and then, seeing which fish are good, and then you've got spears and spheres are very targeted, You know accounts that you're going after ideas, and so I think our marketing strategies should always have those those three. So for seeds the most common people do is social media
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Fahd Alhattab: uh podcasts and content, right like uh blogging,
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Fahd Alhattab: I would say, the biggest lesson for seeds for me was around.
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Fahd Alhattab: We try and generate demand, but we should show up where demand is. So most of us
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have a topic we're interested in speaking at on.
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Fahd Alhattab: But we you spend a day on an S. Ceo search engine kind of program like semrush or a refs. And just look at what all the people are searching for in your industry,
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Fahd Alhattab: the people, what what questions are they asking? There's already There's so much data about all the questions people already asking. Instead, we're out here guessing what questions they're asking. I can within a day find out all the questions managers are asking about their leadership journey,
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Fahd Alhattab: and and so I used to. Here's what I want to tell managers instead. They
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Fahd Alhattab: what what our managers are already asking.
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Fahd Alhattab: And and even though sometimes you can, you can rent Sometimes it's hard to rank for some of those big questions, because Google is competitive. But forget ranking. Take those same questions and just answer them on social media, because they are the questions that are top of mind. Answer them on your podcast. They are the question. So I think, for my seeds. I wish I spent more time understanding where demand already was, instead of trying to generate, demand. And so in marketing. There's always capturing demand or generating demand. There's these two ideas
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Fahd Alhattab: capturing demands. When someone's already interested, How do you capture that generating madness to nurture someone to make them interested. Well, most of us are single shops, two or three people you're not going to generate demand that takes tons of money and resources, but your goal should be to try to capture demand, which means to find out where it already is and where it is showing up. So I think, like extremely ah seo optimized content for Google. But then, using that same content that is really hot topic
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Fahd Alhattab: for a newsletter. For example, I used to write a newsletter. We were a Newsletter weekly, bi-weekly about stuff that's happening, or like different lessons we wanted to teach, but now we only do it on the hot topic of that week, and our readership has gone up.
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Fahd Alhattab: We were. We were trying to generate demand instead of meat demand where it was, So I think there's an interesting frame of mind that can help us shift.
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Fahd Alhattab: I love that. Okay. So just to recap people, we've got three ah marketing ideas seeds That's the nurture nets. That's kind of the spray and prey and spears, and it's all in the name.
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Jane Atkinson: Go get this fish.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, Yeah,
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Jane Atkinson: So tell me again the tools that you're using to find the key phrases and what people are asking.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. So you know, people sometimes make the tools seem very complicated, and they can be. It's like excel. You know how they use all these macros and all these things, but most of us don't even know how to do an equal sum. Sam Rush, Scm. Rush is a good one, and A. Fs. A. A. H. R. E. F. S
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Fahd Alhattab: our great tools. Um, I know Neil Patel has ah as a tool again. Ah, seo tool! They're good tools, and they they come with little courses, and you can get an ah seo plan, but it's good for you to understand where demand is. So that that's that's a big lesson for seeds. That was the seeds lesson for me is that
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Fahd Alhattab: if if you're planning for ten years out, then long tail content, which content actually is searchable, so little is searchable. Youtube is searchable. And now more than ever. Tik tok is becoming searchable. So if you're thinking ten years out, you want searchable content that can can work for itself over the years right and and and help with that
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Fahd Alhattab: hiring a student, for you know, Tik Tok, if you have no interest in Tiktok whatsoever, and get some youthful energy into your business, and somebody come in and help you with that. I love that you are hiring students.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, And you know what it's fun to get to Mentor and the students. They give you energy. They give you a good idea. They they're critical of you because this generation is very old,
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Fahd Alhattab: very open, with its feedback, and you know what we want that like, you know it. It pushes you to be better than than sometimes, and you're just surrounded with. I don't know your and agencies would just tell you You're always doing a good job right like like there's you need somewhere,
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Fahd Alhattab: so the second piece is nets
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Jane Atkinson: all right.
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Fahd Alhattab: So nets could be ads, and that's our ads. Or if you get a big email list and you send out those emails. So here's my lesson for ads
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Fahd Alhattab: unless you have a B to see. So So this is an interesting,
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Fahd Alhattab: I think the best products that can sell for ads in in this net is that is a B to C product that can utilize B to B budgets. So, Jane, you're in this space, so it's an individual that will purchase it, but they'll use a B to be budget because it's a business cost It'll help me return so. An individual buyer who is the buyer themselves that also um can use a business budget to to purchase it. So it's A to be to C sell with the B Twob. Budget
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Fahd Alhattab: um is a really interesting space for kind of these ad content like to get to get to get courses. That's where the majority of courses that we see online are all about how to make more money in some shape or form, how to build a social media business, so you can make more money how to do that, because the more money piece is a clear return on investment and makes it easy. Now, not all of us are in that space. So should you be doing all these social media pieces unless it's a clear B to C. Buyer which many speakers are not.
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Fahd Alhattab: I do not think that social media advertising should be where they spend their dollars, they should go all in search. So take all that money and just put it in Google Search. If you're not doing any Google search ads right now. You're probably missing out on some good business, right? Like It's money for sure. But think about it. It's a thousand dollars a month. It's twelve grand a year, you know, but you're probably going to pay four to five dollars a click. You need one. Sales come out of that for most speakers who listen to your podcast, maybe two sales to cover that entire cost,
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Fahd Alhattab: and if you are good, then the lifetime value of that one sale is more than the initial sale, right. If you get re-booked, or if you get additional referral, so it might be good to you're starting out to eat some of that cost in your first or two years, as you get the rounds going.
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Jane Atkinson: What did you? Um! What was your education in.
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Fahd Alhattab: I did economics and political science
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Jane Atkinson: geeking out on all of this.
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Fahd Alhattab: I'm getting out a lot. Let me go, and I love it. I love hearing you. That's why I want to tell you a podcast. Because I love hearing you talk about these numbers, and some of you are gonna just want to go and take it back.
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Fahd Alhattab: I'm sorry, but i'm hoping that you'll just grab on to a piece like, Hey, if you're not spending any money to to be out there solving a problem. Then maybe there's something that you can.
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Jane Atkinson: Looking at. Ok. Seeds. We had a one problem. We've had one problem: What did you do wrong with spears.
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Fahd Alhattab: Honestly,
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Fahd Alhattab: I didn't give it the attention it should. So if there's anything you're gonna do,
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Fahd Alhattab: screw your seeds and screw your necks spears identify you, you know. I think it's. Russell Brunson calls it your dream. One hundred list. We identified one hundred companies in Canada and the United States, based on seven prospecting factors. So here's seven factors that makes them an ideal client for us, and we put them all on the list,
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Fahd Alhattab: and we're working our way in. So how are we working our way in? I'll go, and i'll use linkedin sales, navigator, and so let's say Jane is a vp of talent at this company, so i'll see Jane and i'll see her mutual connections. I'll click on Jen's Mutual connections between R. And I, and i'll look at the list of mutual connections. And oh,
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Fahd Alhattab: there's Bob I haven't spoken to, but I went to university with him. I haven't spoken to him in years, but you know what how to get a relationship, Hey, Bob? Looks like, you know, Jane, Do you know, Jane?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, I know Jane, from this one-time thing. Would you be hoping to give me an introduction? Yeah, No problem. You're great people.
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Fahd Alhattab: They're loose connections. I'm spoken about in three years, but he's he knows good of me, and he knows what I've done. So then Bob says, Hey, Jane, I want you to meet fah, and I just got an intro, and i'm getting a meeting without any ad spend, and i'm getting, and i'm getting the credibility that has completely changed the game, because I realized I was spending all this money trying to convert cold traffic when you can use your network to that extent, people think using your network is like, Oh, sell to people in your network. No,
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Fahd Alhattab: your network will give you the intros to the next right.
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Fahd Alhattab: And what we do sometimes is we also just, you know, if we realize there's not an immediate need for that person. So you and I me, and they're like, Oh, we don't we're not looking at anything right now and say no problem, and you'd be perfect for our podcast. And you want to spend some time together in our podcast. And so what we do is we develop a relationship because they're on our dream one hundred. So i'm going to keep that person warm, and i'm going to engage them in something. So then they share our podcast. They share it on their blog. They're talking about us to their team,
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Fahd Alhattab: and the next time they're thinking about any team development leadership development, we're top of mind. So when we started really focusing on the dream one hundred
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Fahd Alhattab: I got more book calls in a month from spears than any of the other um ah seeds or nets. Ah, but the seeds! And that's help the spheres, because they'll see our ads, and they'll see our blogs and the buying journey is more and more online. So there is a full feedback loop for sure. That's why I mentioned all three. But I just, I think, after spending so much money on marketing and and and advertising. I realized that good, good, good, a good sphere. Strategy is true
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truly. Still, the best strategy
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Jane Atkinson: I love this, and I love that. You whittled it down to. We call it a farm club, A one hundred company list like these are the people we want to get in front of.
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Fahd Alhattab: And for those of you who have been doing this for a while, hey? When's the last time you really identified like who the dream list is
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Fahd Alhattab: that down, and let's start focusing on that. And yeah, I think, using linkedin as a right way. And I think, Jane, often the speakers people say, Oh, when is it okay to do something free or not? So now I have that answer.
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Fahd Alhattab: Is someone from my dream one hundred going to be there
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Fahd Alhattab: if the answer is, Yes, I'm willing to look at something that's maybe probable, and a free, because i'm getting advertising, I'm there in front of them if it's not someone within my dream. One hundred.
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Fahd Alhattab: No, i'm good. It's a very clear, not not not encouraging free stuff. But sometimes when that decision is hard is, you know it's more targeted. Now
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Fahd Alhattab: let's add on to that and make Okay. So you have one target in those audience of five hundred people. Let's make your target person be the hero of a story. Maybe you connect with them ahead of time, say i'm looking for a little research because i'm going to go do this. And now they're going. Oh, they're amazing, speaker, and they do this research, and you make them sure of your story like crease, that we all baby. I love it. I love it. You have so many amazing ideas about
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Okay. So we've talked about.
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Fahd Alhattab: Okay, uh, and I love the and for the angle of what to do wrong. I'm always happy to tell me what I did wrong, because, like I do so much wrong like I I can't even. It's constantly like Ah, we put this up party. I don't know. Sorry i'm. I'm swearing on on this. I like you just like we just try things, and we burn a lot of money along the way, like a precaution to people, but also it's a it's. I say it's it's it's it's experiment, and you have to be
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Fahd Alhattab: intentional if you experiment. So we're not just burning money without having a hypothesis trying it out and giving ourselves a boundary, for when we know which work or not,
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Jane Atkinson: well um talk a little bit about what an ad spend might be for a month for your company just out of curiosity. You know you're building to seven figures, and beyond or actually, I don't even know if you're already there. But talk about what your ad spend might be.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. So right now our our ad friend was hovering around five grand a month. Um! Which is not crazy high for some of these Internet companies at all like um. But i'd say we were there because we're still experimenting our unit economics.
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Fahd Alhattab: So you shouldn't put more fuel into an engine that's leaking right like. And so as long as our unit economics weren't perfect, we don't want to add more fuel to it. And So this is why I say we're experimenting. Because I realized that I might even lower some of that ad spend. Put it all into purely Google ads, and then take that two thousand dollars a month, and send a physical campaign to my dream one hundred.
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Fahd Alhattab: So you know, I had this idea of sending them all rubik's cubes with a note that says, You know, when you look at a roots you you think it's easy to solve until you mess it up, and then you're trying to resolve it. It's kind of like team dynamics. You think you know what you want, but it's really hard to actually get there, and, like you would love to get on a call with you
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Fahd Alhattab: like a little gift. That's physical, because then you'll open up the package and you go. What is this? And i'll spend the same amount, but it's more targeted. And so sometimes I just cut the same money kind of trying in different buckets.
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Jane Atkinson: And what about if once you have the book to that can be when it's book coming out,
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Fahd Alhattab: we're probably still a year away. We're probably still a year away, and you know what it's, because actually here's your
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Fahd Alhattab: Ah! I started writing the book from what I wanted to teach and what we have in the course, and it still is primarily that. But then, when my insight came in around trying to meet demand where it is, versus where I want it to go. Part of me started to go. Well, one second I should research some of these chapters to see. Are these questions people are actually asking, Or is this my nerdy self, an organizational psychology and philosophy that wants to dive into how teams should work in a certain way.
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Fahd Alhattab: But it's so nuanced because it's i'm so deep into it. And so i'm trying to pull myself out of my own ass by actually looking at where demand trends are. So it slows me down a little bit, and I definitely sometimes have that with this book it's been like Ah, you know, Tippy toeing around it for a while, but it's it's it's in the progress, and and we're
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Fahd Alhattab: we're iterating it quite a few, quite a few times, because I think it's an important piece for me. It's going to be a really important piece. Yeah,
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Fahd Alhattab: it will be an important piece, and I think your one hundred companies that will be what you want to put in their hand as well as I love about the package. I think the bookie package isn't Great. Yes, nobody is getting hardly anything in the mail anymore, right? Except for bills. When you get something that's fun to open. I think that's really cool when you said the Rubik's cube. I was picturing little faces on the ruby's cube
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Fahd Alhattab: like team that could be fun. We probably get that,
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Jane Atkinson: or maybe it's not team members. Maybe it's their job titles.
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Fahd Alhattab: I don't know.
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Jane Atkinson: I I just think that you are somebody who definitely has a lot to offer your clients, and they're so lucky when I get you in front of them to speak. So what advice are you giving final question to new speakers these days?
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Fahd Alhattab: It's a good question. What advice would I give to new speakers these days,
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Fahd Alhattab: you know.
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Fahd Alhattab: I think I think I think, for for all the speakers we we eventually, at one point understand that the value.
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Fahd Alhattab: The value is two for what we create. As what value do we actually create? Okay, So it's our content. There's Ip in the content, but it's also our ability to deliver it. So it's It's kind of our entertainment. It's our engagement. It's our kind of understanding that that value. So So why Why, I say, that is that I think
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Fahd Alhattab: we kind of put keynoting as the Holy Grail, or like. I want a keynote.
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Fahd Alhattab: Okay, but really the value you're providing, is engaging
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Fahd Alhattab: content, content that people want to consume and learn from you. Learning, plus engaging keynoting. Is a form of that it's A. It's a stand-up comedy act training as a form of that coaching is a form of that. All of these are different forms of that. And so I would say that you want to use all of the all of the forms that have less barriers to access, to test your content,
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Fahd Alhattab: so
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Fahd Alhattab: content should be tested at a coaching level at a training level in a book, in a webinar and a seminar in a in a podcast. Once it gets good, it gets refined, it makes its way up to a keynote. We we're always placing up a keynote as like, I want more keynote to on my keynote. It's like, Why are you testing new content? Are you playing with you? Are you trying it out? And there are other barriers like there. There's less various entry than than speaking. Speaking has a lot of areas to entry. If you're a new speaker, right, you mean your demo. You get on stage, and you want a certain feed, and you know, and that's good. Keep working toward that.
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Fahd Alhattab: But what can you do along the way? I think the one thing that I didn't realize
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Fahd Alhattab: made me good. Decent was that, like I did sixty, seventy high schools a year. So the amount of reps I got to tell a story and learning to be on stage and credibility translated to when I started adapting content. But that was because I was doing a five hundred dollars gift at six, I mean, I drove to i'm an auto I drove to Toronto and backwards six hundred and twenty five dollars, gig and didn't want to get a hotel. Just so I, you know, to save money, like you know, like like like you know, I put in those wraps, but those reps made me better,
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Fahd Alhattab: and by no means um, I, you know I think there's so much more room for me to grow, and I love being with other youth speakers that I that I've faded in the youth industry because they have so many reps. Some of them have been doing this twenty, twenty, five years in the youth space. And you're just like because the buried entry is a bit less. There is so much more gigs happening. You get the scale, so I think, for new speakers
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Fahd Alhattab: get as many gigs as you can at lower prices. J. Get that? Get their reps in, and stuff that have less barrier to entry and try and sell some of your ideas online through a seminar, through a Webinar, through an ebook, so on and so forth. Because that's what validates, whether your content is good enough whether people are actually willing to pay you
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Fahd Alhattab: um awesome. I I just think that um people are going to get some ideas from this, You know. I hadn't thought about taking work from my coaching and putting it into keynote hadn't talked about, you know, taking things that i'm learning from my facilitation and adding it to my keynote, definitely putting in your time. And we know that you speakers are wrong warriors, and
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Jane Atkinson: they they've really paved their path into the speaking industry, and that they deserve to be there. How would you most like people to connect with you?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, I think Linkedin is probably the the platform that i'm primarily on like. So you can find me on Linkedin. I'm obviously on Instagram, too, and we're doing more and more with Tiktok. So if you're on those platforms you can find me there. Um! But if there's any uh a genuine inquiry that you want to engage on, I my website. You know we're on lab. You can pull a call with us directly, you know, and that that way, and have a conversation
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Jane Atkinson: al-hat t a b
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Jane Atkinson: I got that over that we'll put some links to you in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for being here. I have loved talking to you today, and I think there's going to be some mind blown out there. I really appreciate your time.
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Fahd Alhattab: Thank you, Jane, really appreciate it. And for those of you listening in. I hope that you'll let us know if you have gleaned some gold from this one, and with that we're going to say you soon want these speakers by for now.
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Jane Atkinson: Well welcome everyone to the wealthy speaker. Podcast. I'm. Excited to talk to you about
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Jane Atkinson: success and growing up business, and we have one of my clients here with me today. Fahad! Um! We want to talk about marketing initiatives. Welcome back! I'm so happy to have you on the show.
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Fahd Alhattab: Thanks, Jane for having me. I'm really excited.
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Jane Atkinson: Did I get your name right?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, you're not it right? We got it right. I've also been a big listener of the show, so i'm excited to be on it as we'll be. This will be fine. I can imagine that when you are giving out your introduction to people that you probably need to sell everything thematically, just to make sure that they get it correct. But tell everybody about your existing business model. Who do you help? And what are all the revenue?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, definitely. Um. So I mean, our business is called unicorn labs. And fundamentally, what we do is we help. We help startups, unlock their talent potential. And and how we do that as we transform managers into leaders that create
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Fahd Alhattab: high-performing teams, teams that help these businesses scale ultimately. And so we live in the space of learning and development leadership development for these managers. And so, naturally our our work takes on a few different forms, our our main bread and butters. We've got a a leadership training program. It's a twelve week intensive program that we take our managers through, and it's teaching them everything from You know how to think like an entrepreneurial leadership, because entrepreneurship looks different at a startup,
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Fahd Alhattab: but also how to create high-performing teams in the environment, what sort of environment you need to create, but also who you need to become in the process. Um. And so our program is our better. But our program's got an online course with coaching support with assessments and templates. That's that's really where we spend the majority of our time. In addition. In addition to that, you know, we offer some upgrades where you get some one on one coaching for key individuals. We do workshops and keynotes for those companies also, where, if they're having a big learning day, we come and join them.
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Fahd Alhattab: We run off-site You know this is one that was kind of fun we we've been doing. Team building retreats has been something that has just been a lot of demand from a lot of our companies who want who are fully remote and want to bring their companies together, and they want to do it intentionally where they're really building teams, and they're thinking about the environment they're creating. So it's definitely taken on different shapes. But that core idea of helping. You know, managers become leaders that create high performing teams that allow businesses to scale is really the space that we're in.
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Fahd Alhattab: Oh, good! And this is why I wanted to talk to you today, because I really do think as you can hear listeners. He knows his stuff,
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Jane Atkinson: what he speaks. Ah, but I want to take us back to the beginning. You're Canadian, I'm Canadian. You had a little bit of an auspicious beginning here in Canada. Talk about your Where did you come from and talk about your family's arrival on the scene in
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, um, you know. So
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Fahd Alhattab: my family's mixed ancestry between Kuwait and Iraq, and after the the first Gulf war in nineteen ninety, when Iraq invaded Kuwait it created quite a complication for our family. Um years of trying to figure out where what place was next for us Canada, you know we came in Canada in one thousand nine hundred and ninety, eight, October thirtieth, and I recall arriving, i'm tell you, quite hot. Equated species is a high country where in October thirtieth. It was
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Fahd Alhattab: like, I just remember it just so vividly. We arrived. I always say, I think my dad chose the the cheapest possible flight, because it took us like forever to. Actually, we were ever really late on October thirty. If we got home we just just like slept that first night, woke up the next day, and we're unpacking all our stuff, and I remember I went to my older brother, and I was like, Hey, we should go check out
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Fahd Alhattab: Canada like we're in Canada. We can check out the neighborhood, Go, walk around. Older Brother was being responsible. He's like, Why, we gotta we gotta unpack our stuff first. We gotta go all stuff.
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Fahd Alhattab: So I rally the troops like I'm from a big family, and i'm one of six. I go to my sisters and I's guys, we should go and check out the neighborhood. They're like no facts. We gotta. We gotta to clean up because the new place we're on back all our stuff, so it takes me a while to rally all the troops. It's about like three, four, P. M. And i'm like, Hey, we're gonna go, and I got all my siblings together, My mom and dad like where you guys going? Oh, we're going. We're going. We're going out. We're going to check out the neighborhood. They're like, hey, what? We're gonna come at this point. It's like five P. M. It's getting a bit dark, and we all walk out,
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Fahd Alhattab: and all we see are little ghosts and goblins running around, knocking on people's doors.
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Fahd Alhattab: It was. It was Halloween. But, like
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Fahd Alhattab: I'm telling you, we had no idea. I mean one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight like unit you weren't on the Internet like you. There was no globalization. You just didn't know. This was a thing we walk out, and I'm telling you. Terrified, I turned to my older brother, and I was like, what,
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Fahd Alhattab: what, what countries, what is this. What they do is this what Canadians do at night like they just my mom turned to my dad. It was like, What devil worship is this right.
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Fahd Alhattab: Ah! We ran back to the house and and just shut the door. We were afraid, called my uncle, the only other family that we had here, and he was just laughing hysterically on the phone, saying, This is something they do every year. My mom was still on this. This is devil worship. I can't do this. The next day we're literally peaking out the window at five Pm. To make sure it is not happening.
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Fahd Alhattab: I love that. That is your kind of welcome to Canada,
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Jane Atkinson: and I love that you arrived here, and that you have been just kind of doing so well and thriving in this environment. How did you even get into speaking?
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Fahd Alhattab: That's a that's a great question. Um!
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Fahd Alhattab: So the the the story for me starts with a project that me and my friends started while we were in high school we were in high school. Um, A friend of mine, who I was in elementary school with. We grew up in. We grew up in in Vanier, of Ottawa, so I mean, coming as as newcomers to Canada. We were in low, low income housing. Our school was typically social economics, school status, and they're just, you know, a lot of challenges in our in our neighborhood. When we went to elementary school, and during graduation our Prince
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Fahd Alhattab: had challenged us to kind of come back to the community and help us. Kids help out the families, you know. So with a nice word, and it nothing ever that I stood out to me. But I mentioned that because in grade twelve it really has stood out to my friend, who recall that experience. I mean. He called me up and said, Fad, I want to try and do a camp, a march break camp for kids in our community who grew up. I told him he was crazy, and that nobody was going to give us their children because we're kids
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Fahd Alhattab: of of high schools now. And so we started this camp, having no idea what we were doing out of the school. We we couldn't even sign the legal paper, so we were both seventeen years old. We had a friend who was eighteen like. We had no idea we had to fundraise money through bake sales and car washes to try and afford to run a camp. We ran this camp during our trade for twenty kids, and it was the beginning of my leadership journey, but I would continue to do it while I was in high school in the last year of high school, and then through all my time in university, and
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Fahd Alhattab: how it kind of got going was was in first-year university. My teacher from high school said, Oh, you you want to share a little bit what you're doing with a camp to like the students, And I said, Yeah, sure, I can come. So I went and spoke to our students, and every year I would go back to my own high school and recruit some volunteers for the camp that you started,
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Fahd Alhattab: and so I was just going around just talking about, hey? We did this camp, we did this project this how it's working There's what you should do like. We identified something we cared about our community and like, listen. We had no idea what we were doing. Honestly, I didn't even think it was gonna work. But like we just put one step forward after another, and like you'd be surprised. Actually, a lot of adults were willing to help us and like it was just this fun story. And then I think i'm in like Third Year University, and my brother's guidance Count, my older older brother's got his counselor, my older brother's no longer in school, but you know I stayed connected with him,
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Fahd Alhattab: called me and said, Hey, I got your phone number from your brother, and I wanted to ask you to come. Speak to all our grade twelve, and I was like sure. Come on, that'll be funny. How much do you charge?
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Fahd Alhattab: What do you mean? What do you mean? How much do I charge
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Fahd Alhattab: It's a wow like I.
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Fahd Alhattab: It's like I pay speakers to do this. I'm like I don't know I work out at the time I was working at a local community center. So I was like I get paid twelve dollars an hour or eleven dollars an hour. I was like, Are you having me come out for an hour. I probably need two hours of prep, so i'm like what fifty bucks like. I like it. I genuinely No idea, really nice guy, you kind of chuck those last, and says I, I want you to go think about it, and then get back to.
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Fahd Alhattab: I have no mentors in this space. I have no idea, so I call him the next, and I said, Listen That I don't know. But if you think fifty bucks was low, like maybe one hundred bucks, and he's like I paid my last speaker like seven hundred and fifty dollars, and I think you're that quality. I've seen you speak. But would would you like me to pay you that? And i'm like That's seven hundred? I'm sitting there calculating, how much am I getting paid per second. I'm used to getting paid hourly minimum wage here. Why, why are you valuing what i'm doing
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Fahd Alhattab: here so much? Now you know. Part of it is. I've always kind of grew up speaking, and like doing public speaking, and and been an environment where, even with community centers, I was doing fundraising. So I had a bit of a natural talent for kind of storytelling and speaking, and honestly, I was just having fun up there. I would tell jokes, and I was so close to the to the youth. I was three years older than them, so I was just the older brother coming in and saying, listen. This is what University is going to be all about. And here's how you could do well. And and it was just so real that I think the message really landed over and over again,
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Fahd Alhattab: and that's that's kind of what keeps it off. And I I was able to speak at, I mean, before before the the current dismantling of we and we day I I I spoke at when I spoke at we in front of sixteen thousand, like great aids, and and you know that was an experience that was the coolest thing ever. And I got to just share about what we did with the camp and how, and that's the story that find a problem in your community and try and solve it. And you know you'll figure it out along the way, and there's going to be some amazing people who help
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Fahd Alhattab: awesome. And I love that. I love it. That's your kind of origin story for speaking, and I also love the part of what?
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Jane Atkinson: Where? You're ten times in everything and beyond. And I love that. And you've got quite a thriving business.
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Jane Atkinson: How important was it for you to identify, not just your money, because you did get your laying down pretty quick, but also your target market. You have been kind of going after this one space. Talk about that a little bit.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, You know it it. I guess it was. It was interesting because i'll tell you what you know I was. I was doing leadership development for high school and university students in this kind of education space. Right?
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Fahd Alhattab: How do you find the leader within you. How do you be effective in your community? A lot of what we call feel good leadership, a lot of inspirational leadership, those kind of talks and and really owning your own life. And I was I was interested in getting into the leadership space.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, incorporate. But I was like, I remember talking to a group in a little mastermind, and I mentioned that, and two people kind of chuckle, and they're like You're young leadership. What do you know? And I like you right. What do What do I know if i'm teaching a You know, a corporate? Ibm leadership? I'm like, I know what my generation needs in leadership, because, as I was, I was president of my high school. I was president of the Student Union at my University like I played, and you know That's an eight million dollars.
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Fahd Alhattab: Ah organization representing twenty five thousand students. I play these leadership roles, and I thought I had certain insights, and I was going around the education space. It kind of fell into my lot because I had spent a few years in the startup tech space. I had my own technology a startup. Um, Frank, as a phone. It was a little bit of a messy one trying to figure out how to bring a certain mobile technology to Canada. Um. I spent a few years working for different startups in kind of marketing business
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Fahd Alhattab: while I was doing the youth speaking stuff, because I mean often when speakers are getting going they have other gigs and other jobs, right, especially like in the youth space. You know, it was one thousand dollars a gig, maybe one thousand five hundred dollars a kid right in there, and it wasn't until
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Fahd Alhattab: you know years into kind of work in the tech space. One of my fellow friends, who was a Ceo of his company, was like, I'm having all these problems with my team.
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Fahd Alhattab: They're like, i'm spending more time managing the team dynamics, personalities here at work than than like actually moving to business for. And it was just over lunch. And I was like, yeah, like. And we tried this, and we tried that. We talked about a few things, and he found it extremely valuable, and he said, Well, are you willing to come to a company and do like a little workshop. I said, Yeah, sure. I'm going. And and i'm like I don't really have material for this. I'm like It's It's the same material I use for like education. He's like No, no, just try it out, but it's an hour like, you know. I'll get the team together. We already do our Friday social like.
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Fahd Alhattab: It'll be a good time. A fun time to do it. And I went in, and I did the workshop, and they absolutely loved it, and it solidified for me that
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Fahd Alhattab: okay, there is
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Fahd Alhattab: a space here in interact with with with our startups, because our startups have young energy that are trying to move really quickly and and intend to be a little nesting. And you've got to be willing to embrace the mess because you're not going to leave, and you're not. You're not trying to create a bureaucracy. You're not trying to create too many systems. You're trying to create some level of messiness. But yeah, you've got to find how to create high-performing teams with really young passionate talent that can be fired.
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Fahd Alhattab: And so then I just started like reading about it, learning about it, attending conferences, and just doing a whole bunch of stuff for free, just like while i'm doing my youth education up helping All these different startups have a network of people that I already knew, helping with teams, doing some coaching, showing up to their team or treats, and facilitating some stuff, something I was already doing for a different market, but learning to tweak it and advance it. And then I started to die really into organizational psychology and married the two. And and that's
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Fahd Alhattab: really how it it came to be. I think it was a a marriage of There's not a lot of people that focus on this at all in the startup world as soon as I get on a call with a company. And I say, they say, Oh, well, there's a lot of leadership.
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Fahd Alhattab: What makes you unique, I say? Well, we primarily focus with high-grow startups. Immediately. Their eyes open up and say, Yeah, you're right. I don't. I don't know anyone else that does that.
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Fahd Alhattab: So Yeah, that that's where we're interested in in the company gone,
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Jane Atkinson: And the reason why it's so perfect is because you're young, and the people they're leading are young, and it's like, of course. Why wouldn't we listen to this guy? So The fact is that you've got this amazing credibility. Ah, in that space, and I love that you bought some books,
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Jane Atkinson: and I really do believe that that's why things are so crazy for you. So okay, let's kind of break down a few things that you think have been game changers for you and your business. Now I know you have a lot of systems. You're really really good at analytics, and you're really really good at tea.
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Jane Atkinson: Um! One of those three, do you think has been the biggest game changer?
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Fahd Alhattab: That's actually a good question.
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Fahd Alhattab: So I I don't know if I would have answered it this way
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Fahd Alhattab: any any sooner than maybe in the last few months. But I think the biggest game changer was the team. Um, I think I got a team. Some people would say that I hired a team early, because I I I always laugh at this with a lot of fellow speakers or trainers, I say, might bring in more revenue. But my margins aren't as great as you think, because I have a big team, because I I know that
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Fahd Alhattab: I need to build a team that's going to help me build the bigger business where i'm trying to get you. And and you know I I have this. I have this thing on my wall. I wish they built for two thousand and thirty right like I'm. I'm. You know those who are winning today
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Fahd Alhattab: for building in two thousand and ten, and and and so those who are going to be winning in two thousand and thirty have been building for ten years, plus and putting their systems in place. So I really took a very long-term approach, and I heard a team. Now the team helped me hone in on my zone of genius,
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Fahd Alhattab: right like, What am I really good at? And And I would say, if you figure out what you're really good at, you should micromanage the heck out of that like really dive into it. Micromanage the whole process for that.
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Fahd Alhattab: Then other things really let go of it, and that's allowed me to have the creative space to build programs. It's allowed me to play with marketing because I realized actually, i'm really good at marketing when I when I take the time for it, but I wasn't taking the time for it Um! And it, and it allowed me to to to really spend time building the team, too, which in itself takes a certain amount of effort and time to create a high-performance team
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Fahd Alhattab: absolutely, and one of the things that you've done really well is you've solved the problem first, and then hired team to to implement the solution. You didn't say i'm not getting enough bookings. You're hired. Go, do it. Give me more.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, Actually, you have figured out how to do it yourself first, and then you hired someone to help kind of build it and grow it and build a funnel up.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, yeah, I And I think that's so important. And And I think there's there's um. There's an argument to be made for hiring agencies that have specialty that can help solve a problem. And then there's an argument to be made for having a staff in-house that once the problem solves
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Fahd Alhattab: ups operated often. We want junior talent to solve complex problems, and you know, or like, or some people often with Speaker. Why, I want someone who can sell for me like. Think about how good you are selling. Because you're a speaker. You are probably worth one hundred and fifty grand in another sales company. So, unless you're going to buy one hundred and fifty grand worth of talent to bring over you're actually lowering The skill set here right like your skill in selling is still better. You can have someone that can that can set the ball up that can set the meetings up that
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Fahd Alhattab: that can make sure they're more available than you to get the ball rolling. But at the end of the day you hit the home runs because of how valuable your talent is right.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. So so that was it. So So our team, our team grew, and and also I was willing to take junior talent like we use a lot of student grants, you know. Students come in and we give them specific projects like You're just gonna work on walls. They're just gonna help us create really good blogs that are seo efficient. Okay, that's it. One student, fifteen hours, twenty hours a week. They're just doing one thing. I'm trying to do a million things we get that student in. They're having fun. They're learning. We're learning with them next, you know, and and we got students to help us with with our Tiktok and our social media, or we get students to help us with
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Fahd Alhattab: um. Ah, we we were doing a ton of video editing right? We needed to launch our course. We got a student from Waterloo who knew how to edit the video, and and we're giving student grants to help subsidize it in the government. And and so we've got a team of four or five six people kind of moving along, and really they start to own the business, and it's amazing when they're calling me out on. Should I need to get better at? And that's when I realized like the business has got a team now, because it's not just me trying to push the vote forward.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. And the second thing I think that it really needs to be amplified is the fact that you're actually stepping fully into your own leadership role while teaching it to others, and who can take your own medicine?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah,
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Jane Atkinson: it walked your talk in this regard, and I think that's very powerful. And I think that that's something that even if you have a team of part-time
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Jane Atkinson: subcontractors, people who just bill you every once in a while. I think you really want to be a leader to that team. Make sure that they know what the vision is on a regular basis and make sure that you're coming together as a team to move that vision forward.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah,
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Jane Atkinson: you're
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Fahd Alhattab: I really love your energy because i'm thinking to myself, he's got the hustle, the hustle, and I had the hustle. What I mean. I've been in this business for over thirty years, and so I want you to just like, touch me, and
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Jane Atkinson: of your energy and all of the ideas and what you have moving forward I feel like i'm kind of in the twilight of my career, and i'm starting to like this book. The next book is the last book in the trilogy.
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Fahd Alhattab: More books.
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Jane Atkinson: Yeah. So, Anyway, I love it.
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Fahd Alhattab: Oh, we're all we're all learning from you. We're we're learning from the the the path that you've paved, and and we stand on the shoulders of the giants that have come before us in this industry. Right like it allows us to to to really move forward and lead forward to the lessons that we ah, we take
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Fahd Alhattab: but this idea of building for two thousand and thirty is so powerful because eight years out, what are you doing in eight years.
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Jane Atkinson: This is our question for our listeners. What are you doing in eight years? What is your plan? And I love that? This is your part that you're gonna have a pretty large team. Okay, So let's talk about some of the things that you think you might have been able to avoid or do differently. Had you known
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Jane Atkinson: what you know now,
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Jane Atkinson: what are some things that you would have been like, Yeah, I would have not partnered with that person or anything that you did that you regret?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. Great great question. Um.
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Fahd Alhattab: So when I think of i'm gonna go, i'm gonna go. You mean with team wise or we want to get into marketing. Yeah,
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Fahd Alhattab: so i'll get it. I'll get into marketing framework, and then i'll tell you. I guess some of the the pieces that we really learned, because I've spent almost one hundred and eighty two hundred grand in marketing this last year, like just doing like ads and agencies and just tests. So i'll give you some of the lessons we've learned from all those tests, because here's here's some expensive lessons.
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Fahd Alhattab: So So um I for marketing. I always think of marketing in three buckets. So then, that way the like kind of list is kind of all. So marketing you. You have seeds, your nets, and you have skiers, Seeds are your content marketing and stuff that you put out there, and you're You're nurturing over long periods of time, right? Like we know plants take two, three, four years to really Blossom. So seeds are really long-term things that you just put out there, and and they might catch something. Nets are kind of specific, but they're a little bit of the spray and prey techniques. Sometimes they're next
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Fahd Alhattab: that could be ads. Nets could be email campaigns. They're kind of you're putting out a net. You're trying to catch a whole bunch of fish at the same time, and then, seeing which fish are good, and then you've got spears and spheres are very targeted, You know accounts that you're going after ideas, and so I think our marketing strategies should always have those those three. So for seeds the most common people do is social media
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Fahd Alhattab: uh podcasts and content, right like uh blogging,
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Fahd Alhattab: I would say, the biggest lesson for seeds for me was around.
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Fahd Alhattab: We try and generate demand, but we should show up where demand is. So most of us
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have a topic we're interested in speaking at on.
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Fahd Alhattab: But we you spend a day on an S. Ceo search engine kind of program like semrush or a refs. And just look at what all the people are searching for in your industry,
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Fahd Alhattab: the people, what what questions are they asking? There's already There's so much data about all the questions people already asking. Instead, we're out here guessing what questions they're asking. I can within a day find out all the questions managers are asking about their leadership journey,
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Fahd Alhattab: and and so I used to. Here's what I want to tell managers instead. They
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Fahd Alhattab: what what our managers are already asking.
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Fahd Alhattab: And and even though sometimes you can, you can rent Sometimes it's hard to rank for some of those big questions, because Google is competitive. But forget ranking. Take those same questions and just answer them on social media, because they are the questions that are top of mind. Answer them on your podcast. They are the question. So I think, for my seeds. I wish I spent more time understanding where demand already was, instead of trying to generate, demand. And so in marketing. There's always capturing demand or generating demand. There's these two ideas
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Fahd Alhattab: capturing demands. When someone's already interested, How do you capture that generating madness to nurture someone to make them interested. Well, most of us are single shops, two or three people you're not going to generate demand that takes tons of money and resources, but your goal should be to try to capture demand, which means to find out where it already is and where it is showing up. So I think, like extremely ah seo optimized content for Google. But then, using that same content that is really hot topic
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Fahd Alhattab: for a newsletter. For example, I used to write a newsletter. We were a Newsletter weekly, bi-weekly about stuff that's happening, or like different lessons we wanted to teach, but now we only do it on the hot topic of that week, and our readership has gone up.
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Fahd Alhattab: We were. We were trying to generate demand instead of meat demand where it was, So I think there's an interesting frame of mind that can help us shift.
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Fahd Alhattab: I love that. Okay. So just to recap people, we've got three ah marketing ideas seeds That's the nurture nets. That's kind of the spray and prey and spears, and it's all in the name.
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Jane Atkinson: Go get this fish.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, Yeah,
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Jane Atkinson: So tell me again the tools that you're using to find the key phrases and what people are asking.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. So you know, people sometimes make the tools seem very complicated, and they can be. It's like excel. You know how they use all these macros and all these things, but most of us don't even know how to do an equal sum. Sam Rush, Scm. Rush is a good one, and A. Fs. A. A. H. R. E. F. S
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Fahd Alhattab: our great tools. Um, I know Neil Patel has ah as a tool again. Ah, seo tool! They're good tools, and they they come with little courses, and you can get an ah seo plan, but it's good for you to understand where demand is. So that that's that's a big lesson for seeds. That was the seeds lesson for me is that
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Fahd Alhattab: if if you're planning for ten years out, then long tail content, which content actually is searchable, so little is searchable. Youtube is searchable. And now more than ever. Tik tok is becoming searchable. So if you're thinking ten years out, you want searchable content that can can work for itself over the years right and and and help with that
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Fahd Alhattab: hiring a student, for you know, Tik Tok, if you have no interest in Tiktok whatsoever, and get some youthful energy into your business, and somebody come in and help you with that. I love that you are hiring students.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, And you know what it's fun to get to Mentor and the students. They give you energy. They give you a good idea. They they're critical of you because this generation is very old,
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Fahd Alhattab: very open, with its feedback, and you know what we want that like, you know it. It pushes you to be better than than sometimes, and you're just surrounded with. I don't know your and agencies would just tell you You're always doing a good job right like like there's you need somewhere,
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Fahd Alhattab: so the second piece is nets
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Jane Atkinson: all right.
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Fahd Alhattab: So nets could be ads, and that's our ads. Or if you get a big email list and you send out those emails. So here's my lesson for ads
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Fahd Alhattab: unless you have a B to see. So So this is an interesting,
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Fahd Alhattab: I think the best products that can sell for ads in in this net is that is a B to C product that can utilize B to B budgets. So, Jane, you're in this space, so it's an individual that will purchase it, but they'll use a B to be budget because it's a business cost It'll help me return so. An individual buyer who is the buyer themselves that also um can use a business budget to to purchase it. So it's A to be to C sell with the B Twob. Budget
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Fahd Alhattab: um is a really interesting space for kind of these ad content like to get to get to get courses. That's where the majority of courses that we see online are all about how to make more money in some shape or form, how to build a social media business, so you can make more money how to do that, because the more money piece is a clear return on investment and makes it easy. Now, not all of us are in that space. So should you be doing all these social media pieces unless it's a clear B to C. Buyer which many speakers are not.
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Fahd Alhattab: I do not think that social media advertising should be where they spend their dollars, they should go all in search. So take all that money and just put it in Google Search. If you're not doing any Google search ads right now. You're probably missing out on some good business, right? Like It's money for sure. But think about it. It's a thousand dollars a month. It's twelve grand a year, you know, but you're probably going to pay four to five dollars a click. You need one. Sales come out of that for most speakers who listen to your podcast, maybe two sales to cover that entire cost,
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Fahd Alhattab: and if you are good, then the lifetime value of that one sale is more than the initial sale, right. If you get re-booked, or if you get additional referral, so it might be good to you're starting out to eat some of that cost in your first or two years, as you get the rounds going.
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Jane Atkinson: What did you? Um! What was your education in.
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Fahd Alhattab: I did economics and political science
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Jane Atkinson: geeking out on all of this.
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Fahd Alhattab: I'm getting out a lot. Let me go, and I love it. I love hearing you. That's why I want to tell you a podcast. Because I love hearing you talk about these numbers, and some of you are gonna just want to go and take it back.
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Fahd Alhattab: I'm sorry, but i'm hoping that you'll just grab on to a piece like, Hey, if you're not spending any money to to be out there solving a problem. Then maybe there's something that you can.
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Jane Atkinson: Looking at. Ok. Seeds. We had a one problem. We've had one problem: What did you do wrong with spears.
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Fahd Alhattab: Honestly,
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Fahd Alhattab: I didn't give it the attention it should. So if there's anything you're gonna do,
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Fahd Alhattab: screw your seeds and screw your necks spears identify you, you know. I think it's. Russell Brunson calls it your dream. One hundred list. We identified one hundred companies in Canada and the United States, based on seven prospecting factors. So here's seven factors that makes them an ideal client for us, and we put them all on the list,
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Fahd Alhattab: and we're working our way in. So how are we working our way in? I'll go, and i'll use linkedin sales, navigator, and so let's say Jane is a vp of talent at this company, so i'll see Jane and i'll see her mutual connections. I'll click on Jen's Mutual connections between R. And I, and i'll look at the list of mutual connections. And oh,
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Fahd Alhattab: there's Bob I haven't spoken to, but I went to university with him. I haven't spoken to him in years, but you know what how to get a relationship, Hey, Bob? Looks like, you know, Jane, Do you know, Jane?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, I know Jane, from this one-time thing. Would you be hoping to give me an introduction? Yeah, No problem. You're great people.
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Fahd Alhattab: They're loose connections. I'm spoken about in three years, but he's he knows good of me, and he knows what I've done. So then Bob says, Hey, Jane, I want you to meet fah, and I just got an intro, and i'm getting a meeting without any ad spend, and i'm getting, and i'm getting the credibility that has completely changed the game, because I realized I was spending all this money trying to convert cold traffic when you can use your network to that extent, people think using your network is like, Oh, sell to people in your network. No,
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Fahd Alhattab: your network will give you the intros to the next right.
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Fahd Alhattab: And what we do sometimes is we also just, you know, if we realize there's not an immediate need for that person. So you and I me, and they're like, Oh, we don't we're not looking at anything right now and say no problem, and you'd be perfect for our podcast. And you want to spend some time together in our podcast. And so what we do is we develop a relationship because they're on our dream one hundred. So i'm going to keep that person warm, and i'm going to engage them in something. So then they share our podcast. They share it on their blog. They're talking about us to their team,
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Fahd Alhattab: and the next time they're thinking about any team development leadership development, we're top of mind. So when we started really focusing on the dream one hundred
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Fahd Alhattab: I got more book calls in a month from spears than any of the other um ah seeds or nets. Ah, but the seeds! And that's help the spheres, because they'll see our ads, and they'll see our blogs and the buying journey is more and more online. So there is a full feedback loop for sure. That's why I mentioned all three. But I just, I think, after spending so much money on marketing and and and advertising. I realized that good, good, good, a good sphere. Strategy is true
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truly. Still, the best strategy
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Jane Atkinson: I love this, and I love that. You whittled it down to. We call it a farm club, A one hundred company list like these are the people we want to get in front of.
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Fahd Alhattab: And for those of you who have been doing this for a while, hey? When's the last time you really identified like who the dream list is
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Fahd Alhattab: that down, and let's start focusing on that. And yeah, I think, using linkedin as a right way. And I think, Jane, often the speakers people say, Oh, when is it okay to do something free or not? So now I have that answer.
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Fahd Alhattab: Is someone from my dream one hundred going to be there
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Fahd Alhattab: if the answer is, Yes, I'm willing to look at something that's maybe probable, and a free, because i'm getting advertising, I'm there in front of them if it's not someone within my dream. One hundred.
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Fahd Alhattab: No, i'm good. It's a very clear, not not not encouraging free stuff. But sometimes when that decision is hard is, you know it's more targeted. Now
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Fahd Alhattab: let's add on to that and make Okay. So you have one target in those audience of five hundred people. Let's make your target person be the hero of a story. Maybe you connect with them ahead of time, say i'm looking for a little research because i'm going to go do this. And now they're going. Oh, they're amazing, speaker, and they do this research, and you make them sure of your story like crease, that we all baby. I love it. I love it. You have so many amazing ideas about
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Okay. So we've talked about.
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Fahd Alhattab: Okay, uh, and I love the and for the angle of what to do wrong. I'm always happy to tell me what I did wrong, because, like I do so much wrong like I I can't even. It's constantly like Ah, we put this up party. I don't know. Sorry i'm. I'm swearing on on this. I like you just like we just try things, and we burn a lot of money along the way, like a precaution to people, but also it's a it's. I say it's it's it's it's experiment, and you have to be
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Fahd Alhattab: intentional if you experiment. So we're not just burning money without having a hypothesis trying it out and giving ourselves a boundary, for when we know which work or not,
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Jane Atkinson: well um talk a little bit about what an ad spend might be for a month for your company just out of curiosity. You know you're building to seven figures, and beyond or actually, I don't even know if you're already there. But talk about what your ad spend might be.
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah. So right now our our ad friend was hovering around five grand a month. Um! Which is not crazy high for some of these Internet companies at all like um. But i'd say we were there because we're still experimenting our unit economics.
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Fahd Alhattab: So you shouldn't put more fuel into an engine that's leaking right like. And so as long as our unit economics weren't perfect, we don't want to add more fuel to it. And So this is why I say we're experimenting. Because I realized that I might even lower some of that ad spend. Put it all into purely Google ads, and then take that two thousand dollars a month, and send a physical campaign to my dream one hundred.
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Fahd Alhattab: So you know, I had this idea of sending them all rubik's cubes with a note that says, You know, when you look at a roots you you think it's easy to solve until you mess it up, and then you're trying to resolve it. It's kind of like team dynamics. You think you know what you want, but it's really hard to actually get there, and, like you would love to get on a call with you
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Fahd Alhattab: like a little gift. That's physical, because then you'll open up the package and you go. What is this? And i'll spend the same amount, but it's more targeted. And so sometimes I just cut the same money kind of trying in different buckets.
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Jane Atkinson: And what about if once you have the book to that can be when it's book coming out,
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Fahd Alhattab: we're probably still a year away. We're probably still a year away, and you know what it's, because actually here's your
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Fahd Alhattab: Ah! I started writing the book from what I wanted to teach and what we have in the course, and it still is primarily that. But then, when my insight came in around trying to meet demand where it is, versus where I want it to go. Part of me started to go. Well, one second I should research some of these chapters to see. Are these questions people are actually asking, Or is this my nerdy self, an organizational psychology and philosophy that wants to dive into how teams should work in a certain way.
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Fahd Alhattab: But it's so nuanced because it's i'm so deep into it. And so i'm trying to pull myself out of my own ass by actually looking at where demand trends are. So it slows me down a little bit, and I definitely sometimes have that with this book it's been like Ah, you know, Tippy toeing around it for a while, but it's it's it's in the progress, and and we're
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Fahd Alhattab: we're iterating it quite a few, quite a few times, because I think it's an important piece for me. It's going to be a really important piece. Yeah,
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Fahd Alhattab: it will be an important piece, and I think your one hundred companies that will be what you want to put in their hand as well as I love about the package. I think the bookie package isn't Great. Yes, nobody is getting hardly anything in the mail anymore, right? Except for bills. When you get something that's fun to open. I think that's really cool when you said the Rubik's cube. I was picturing little faces on the ruby's cube
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Fahd Alhattab: like team that could be fun. We probably get that,
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Jane Atkinson: or maybe it's not team members. Maybe it's their job titles.
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Fahd Alhattab: I don't know.
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Jane Atkinson: I I just think that you are somebody who definitely has a lot to offer your clients, and they're so lucky when I get you in front of them to speak. So what advice are you giving final question to new speakers these days?
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Fahd Alhattab: It's a good question. What advice would I give to new speakers these days,
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Fahd Alhattab: you know.
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Fahd Alhattab: I think I think I think, for for all the speakers we we eventually, at one point understand that the value.
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Fahd Alhattab: The value is two for what we create. As what value do we actually create? Okay, So it's our content. There's Ip in the content, but it's also our ability to deliver it. So it's It's kind of our entertainment. It's our engagement. It's our kind of understanding that that value. So So why Why, I say, that is that I think
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Fahd Alhattab: we kind of put keynoting as the Holy Grail, or like. I want a keynote.
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Fahd Alhattab: Okay, but really the value you're providing, is engaging
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Fahd Alhattab: content, content that people want to consume and learn from you. Learning, plus engaging keynoting. Is a form of that it's A. It's a stand-up comedy act training as a form of that coaching is a form of that. All of these are different forms of that. And so I would say that you want to use all of the all of the forms that have less barriers to access, to test your content,
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Fahd Alhattab: so
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Fahd Alhattab: content should be tested at a coaching level at a training level in a book, in a webinar and a seminar in a in a podcast. Once it gets good, it gets refined, it makes its way up to a keynote. We we're always placing up a keynote as like, I want more keynote to on my keynote. It's like, Why are you testing new content? Are you playing with you? Are you trying it out? And there are other barriers like there. There's less various entry than than speaking. Speaking has a lot of areas to entry. If you're a new speaker, right, you mean your demo. You get on stage, and you want a certain feed, and you know, and that's good. Keep working toward that.
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Fahd Alhattab: But what can you do along the way? I think the one thing that I didn't realize
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Fahd Alhattab: made me good. Decent was that, like I did sixty, seventy high schools a year. So the amount of reps I got to tell a story and learning to be on stage and credibility translated to when I started adapting content. But that was because I was doing a five hundred dollars gift at six, I mean, I drove to i'm an auto I drove to Toronto and backwards six hundred and twenty five dollars, gig and didn't want to get a hotel. Just so I, you know, to save money, like you know, like like like you know, I put in those wraps, but those reps made me better,
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Fahd Alhattab: and by no means um, I, you know I think there's so much more room for me to grow, and I love being with other youth speakers that I that I've faded in the youth industry because they have so many reps. Some of them have been doing this twenty, twenty, five years in the youth space. And you're just like because the buried entry is a bit less. There is so much more gigs happening. You get the scale, so I think, for new speakers
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Fahd Alhattab: get as many gigs as you can at lower prices. J. Get that? Get their reps in, and stuff that have less barrier to entry and try and sell some of your ideas online through a seminar, through a Webinar, through an ebook, so on and so forth. Because that's what validates, whether your content is good enough whether people are actually willing to pay you
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Fahd Alhattab: um awesome. I I just think that um people are going to get some ideas from this, You know. I hadn't thought about taking work from my coaching and putting it into keynote hadn't talked about, you know, taking things that i'm learning from my facilitation and adding it to my keynote, definitely putting in your time. And we know that you speakers are wrong warriors, and
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Jane Atkinson: they they've really paved their path into the speaking industry, and that they deserve to be there. How would you most like people to connect with you?
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Fahd Alhattab: Yeah, I think Linkedin is probably the the platform that i'm primarily on like. So you can find me on Linkedin. I'm obviously on Instagram, too, and we're doing more and more with Tiktok. So if you're on those platforms you can find me there. Um! But if there's any uh a genuine inquiry that you want to engage on, I my website. You know we're on lab. You can pull a call with us directly, you know, and that that way, and have a conversation
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Jane Atkinson: al-hat t a b
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Jane Atkinson: I got that over that we'll put some links to you in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for being here. I have loved talking to you today, and I think there's going to be some mind blown out there. I really appreciate your time.
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Fahd Alhattab: Thank you, Jane, really appreciate it. And for those of you listening in. I hope that you'll let us know if you have gleaned some gold from this one, and with that we're going to say you soon want these speakers by for now.
Highlights you won’t want to miss:
- Fahd’s current revenue streams. [1:00]
- Becoming a speaker. [6:00]
- Finding your target market. [11:00]
- Build a team to build your business. [16:00]
- Expensive lessons to avoid. [22:00]
- Seeds, nets and spears. [30:30]
- Marketing buckets. [36:00]
- Test your content. [39:00]
Known for his ability to lead others, Fahd launched a student entrepreneurship centre called Hatch, which founded around 15 student start-ups and raised more than $200,000 in seed capital – not including a tech start-up he launched post-graduation, raising thousands in a crowdfunding campaign. Fahd currently works with leaders and their organizations across Canada to maximize team effectiveness and build the next generation of global leaders. He also consults post-secondary institutions on how to bring an entrepreneurial mindset into the classroom. As a youth speaker, his use of storytelling, humour, and interactive training has engaged more than 50,000 participants across Canada, leaving them feeling empowered to be the leaders of today.
If you would like to learn some great techniques that can help your business and income grow, you simply can’t afford to miss this episode!
I hope you’ll download and learn.
Links:
Fahd’s website
Semrush
Ahrefs
Neil Patel
Fahd’s LinkedIn profile
Jane’s LinkedIn profile
The Wealthy Speaker School
Jane’s Private Coaching Options
