I Work 20 Hours a Week — Here’s How I Fit YouTube In

Welcome back to the Rich and Recommended series where I'm talking about how we're getting rich, uh, with money, free time, and fun, plus recommended by AI, YouTube, and our clients by word of mouth more in 2026. This part is part 1, and in this video I'm gonna walk you through how I fit YouTube into a calendar where I only work 20-hour weeks. So I'm gonna break down exactly what I do, how I fit it in, what I actually do hour to hour in my schedule. But first, if you did not watch the introduction of what I'm actually doing in this Rich and Recommended series, I'm gonna link to part 0 that I did last week. And that part talks about how I am recommitting to YouTube in 2026 to make a million dollars in my business. Just by creating YouTube content. So after this video, go back, watch that video because I break down my actual revenue from 2025. Then I show you how I made over $170,000 in just one month and why I quit Instagram. So that is all listed below this video for you to check out next. If you are here live, hello, please say hello in the chat. I would love to see, um, what in particular are you interested in learning about in my schedule? What questions do you have about fitting YouTube into your schedule? What is the time commitment you're worried about? What are your concerns around YouTube and time? So please go ahead and share that in the chat if you're live, and if you are catching the replay as well, please share, and I will be circling back to answer those questions. Now, before I get into today's episode where I am going to show you exactly how to, Fit YouTube into a 2-hour day or a 20-hour work week. I am just double-checking, can you guys hear and see me? So just give me a thumbs up in the chat. I want to make sure we're all good. I don't want to film this whole thing and not be working. So before we dive in, I did want to tell you that the Build Your Big Reputation virtual conference is coming up and I have to tell you about it because what I'm sharing, that's Rich and Recommended series, This is just basically the tip of the iceberg. In the Build Your Big Reputation virtual conference, I am going to be going deep. I'm gonna be walking you through exactly how to set up your YouTube strategy so that you're getting found by the right people, you're getting recommended by AI, and you're actually converting viewers into clients without needing to be on social media every day. Who would love that? Who would love to replace their social media calendar or content calendar by just posting one video a week? Go ahead and say me in the comments. I know I have the right people here. So, um, if you're wondering how you can do that, or if you are posting on YouTube and you're like, well, I'm not making sales, make sure you get your ticket. It's a full-day virtual event. It goes from about 11 AM Eastern Standard Time to about 3 PM Eastern Standard Time. It's all one day. You can get your ticket at trenalittle.com/rep. I believe I have it right here. Let me see. Um, that is the link you'll want to go to. Um, it is a paid-for ticket because I'm looking for serious people. I'm looking for those of you that have an offer that you're ready to sell more of on YouTube, that you're tired of showing up on Instagram to show, that you're tired of pumping ads into. So this conference is for those business owners who are serious about selling more of their offer without needing to be on social media longer. So again, make sure you get your ticket for the Build Your Big Reputation Virtual Conference because that is coming up soon. Okay, anybody here bought their ticket already? Say I'm in if you already bought your ticket. I'd love to say welcome to the virtual conference if you bought your ticket already. So today's episode, this part 1 of the Rich and Recommended series, is around time in calendar because one thing everybody asks me is how do you find time to do YouTube? And I'm going to be honest with you, recommitting to YouTube is harder than starting something new. So in the last live in this series, I mentioned how I'm recommitting to YouTube because I have this muscle memory with YouTube and I can create my weekly videos, I can get views, I can kind of pump it out muscle memory-wise, right? But to level it up to 3 times the views that I want to get on my YouTube channel to hit the goals that I need for my sales to get to $1 million this year in my business, that's going to take some additional time. That's going to take me actually focusing and putting time into my YouTube content, thus why I'm recommitting. So I have to create very firm boundaries. Let me know if you here have good boundaries or not. If you're a little bit like, yeah, my boundaries are a little weak, I kind of stretch a little bit, skip that, then let me know how you feel about boundaries. But I'm gonna pull up my actual calendar. So this is a screenshot of my calendar. And I think I can make this a little bit bigger for you guys. So let me present that and make sure that it's showing up here. This is literally a screenshot of my calendar. I want you to see that I only work Monday through Thursdays. That is it. Um, I work from about 10 AM till 3:30. Uh, I always have off on Fridays. That is a non-negotiable. That is a boundary that I set over a year ago. And you can see I also go to a Pilates class every morning at 9 AM. Again, a non-negotiable for me as well. So this is a total of about 20 hours a week that I spend working in my business. Let me know in the chat, how many hours a week are you spending in your business? Are you doing an 80-hour week? Are you doing a 15-hour week? I'm just curious, what is your weekly hours look like in your business? So what I want to walk through first is what I will not sacrifice to find time to double down on my YouTube content, right? So I mentioned I will not skip Pilates. I have been dreaming of going to a fitness class in this small town, and we finally have a fitness class. So I am going to not be skipping Pilates. And so that's a non-negotiable. I will not work Fridays. I feel I started my business to be able to have time freedom in my business. So I will not add Fridays to my work hours either. I will also not cut client time. So, uh, there are calls that I have with my clients that I will not cut. There are calls that I do with my clients. There are, um, training and resources that I create for them. There are audits that I do for them, and I will not cut that time either. So where does YouTube fit? Uh, what I want to tell you is it's not about adding more to what you're doing to get more revenue in your business. It's about eliminating. So this is what I changed, okay? The one thing that I've done the last 18 months particularly is I stopped focusing on all of my offers in my business except my YouTube coaching experience. I only focus on that one offer that has one clear transformation because that is the fastest path to $1 million. If you can have one offer with one clear transformation for one clear person, that is going to eliminate all the extra work that you're doing. And it's going to become very clear for the person that is best for that program that they need to be in it. Does that make sense? Creating one offer that you will focus on. Now, the next thing I did is I tried to avoid side quests. Maybe you know what it's like, the shiny object syndrome, the, the shiny object syndrome, being a squirrel and thinking about all these different ideas. Let me know in the chat if you have shiny object syndrome. But I have finally broke the habit of getting an idea and immediately going to do that. So like I have an idea of maybe I create a custom GPT and sell it, or maybe I do a paid offer and I sell it, or maybe I create this little side project or this little side course and I create it just to make some more cash. I've stopped that. I have created boundaries also in my business to stay focused on the game plan. And the game plan for my business is feeding the YouTube coaching experience. That's the end game for everything that I do in my business. And so what I did is I dug into a lot of data in my business, and I teach my clients how to find this data, what to do with this data. But what I found, and I'm going to share some examples here, is that rinse and repeating things that actually work is the fastest way to a million dollars. So maybe you can relate, maybe you've done webinars, maybe you've done like challenges, maybe you've done virtual conferences or summits and you keep recreating these things. I have decided to stay rinse and repeat cycle. So I will do a virtual conference, like I mentioned, 2 to 3 times a year, but I never start that virtual conference from scratch because I have data that I'm going to show you that proves my virtual conference converts. So why would I create a different virtual conference or a different thing that I don't know the data for? The other thing that has been very good for my business, and it's been very hard for me to stay on track, and let me know if you guys can say, find it hard to stay on track too, is webinars. So somebody may say webinars are dead, but my weekly webinar is the same weekly webinar every single week. And I can convert about 5 to 10 clients every single week with my weekly webinar that I created last May. And I show up every Monday and I deliver it to a fresh batch of new people and I convert 5 to 10 clients every single week. So let me show you what this looks like and why I do this. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen again with some of the slides that I created to visually represent this information too. So what you're seeing right now is we took my entire list of customers to find out where is my biggest converting entry points. So these are entry points to the YouTube coaching experience. And you can see right there, my virtual conference, both the Evergreen Evermore and the big Reputation Summit convert over 15% almost. So why would I create something new that I have no data on whether it will convert or not? Now you can also see that my CEO Day and a paid workshop, those are all paid workshops, all convert over 13%. So these are fantastic events that I could rinse and repeat to get more clients into the YouTube coaching experience. And then you do see my free webinar. And I do want to point out here that yes, it converts less than 2%, but I want to explain, I have grown my email list by over 15,900 new people in less than a year from a free webinar. And a lot of the people that bought tickets to last year's Build Your Big Reputation Summit came from those free webinar summits. Came from this free webinar. So what the free webinar is doing is it's creating a simple free entry point into my world, and then I'm building a reputation with them. All right. Then the other thing I want to point out is why I focus specifically on YouTube. This is straight from my Google Analytics dashboard, and this is something that I talk to my clients a lot about. Let me know in the chat, do you have Google Analytics set up and are you tracking traffic? To your site and what's converting? Give me a yes or no in the chat. So this is coming from Google Analytics and I can see right here, plain as day, the traffic that comes from YouTube converts at 30%. These aren't in the actual percentage, 0.3 means 30, right? And the traffic that came from Instagram when I was doing Instagram converts at 10%. I have to create a buttload of more content on Instagram to get that 10%. Whereas with YouTube, I create one video a week and I get a 30% conversion rate from that traffic. So where am I going to spend my time? Where's my time best spent? That's why I was able to eliminate Instagram with confidence, because this data tells me I'm wasting my time on Instagram. So why create Reels? Why scroll through trending audio? Why waste my time when I can create one YouTube video a week and it converts at 30%? And so then what I want to show you here is as I rinsed and repeated all of last year starting in May, this is why my revenue grew. So this is my revenue for all of last year. You can see starting from January, um, I hosted a virtual conference in May. Look at that, an increase in revenue. Then I was on vacation in June. Uh, we continuously built our email list. From May through September with the weekly webinar. I was still getting sales and still booking clients and converting clients to accumulate a fresh new list of leads to then host a launch in October. And boom, right there is that spike. That is where I created over $175,000 a month in one month because I rinsed and repeated a weekly webinar and all my YouTube videos the call to action was to get on the next weekly webinar. And so then obviously in November with Black Friday, things can get a little busy in inboxes, a little bit harder to convert. I was also out for Thanksgiving. I probably took at least 6 weeks of vacation last year as well, like not online at all. In addition to the Fridays off, because I have created this system of rinse and repeating, And then again, because of all the collections of all the email lists that I grew from May, we were able to have an over $80,000 month in December. I didn't even work the last 3 weeks in December and still made $83,000 just by sending a few emails because of the system of rinse and repeating, creating YouTube videos that fed the webinar. The webinar converted 5 to 10 clients every week, and then we had these major cyclical quarterly events that then converted people later on down the road. Is that making sense? Does that make sense to you? How simplification can totally change what you're doing? Because now throughout the week, the only thing that I need to focus on is my weekly webinar on Monday, my clients, and now I have the extra time throughout the week to work on improving my YouTube content, to work on improving my YouTube analytics, my thumbnails, the things that actually matter on YouTube. And so this is how I'm gonna get the time to put into YouTube without adding more hours to my work schedule. I'm keeping it at 20 hours a week. It gets even more crazy come the summer with kids at home, right? And so this is exactly what my YouTube production schedule looks like. Okay, so I will sit down and I teach my clients this exact process. I know a few of them are here online. I create series of videos called the playlist funnel. We're going to be talking more about that in part 3. So make sure you're subscribed to the channel because I'm going to break down the playlist funnel. But I create my videos in series of 5 videos called the playlist funnel. And so in one day, I will sit down in like 2 to 3 hours, I will have planned 5 videos and that's 5 weeks worth of content, right? One video a week. Then the second week I will sit down to film. And for me, I don't like to film all 5 in one week. Um, I will film 2 to 3 videos in one day and that takes me about 2 to 3 hours. So I'm scripting and it's taking me about 2 to 3 hours for 5 videos and I'm filming and it's taking me about 2 to 3 hours for 2 to 3 videos. Okay. And so that's easy to fit into my time with my 20-hour work week, right? I will usually do like a scripting day once a week and then 2 filming days once a week, like back-to-back weeks. And that's the only time I need to do hair and makeup, you guys. I know so many people get worried about doing hair and makeup. I only need to do my hair and makeup twice a month with my YouTube content. Now I do my weekly webinar, I've gotta do that. If I'm doing lives, I gotta do that as well. But this is content that I create that constantly builds my email list because content on YouTube grows over time and it doesn't expire like Instagram. And content on YouTube can get pushed more organically by the YouTube algorithm when you do it right versus Meta, Anything on Meta, you've got to pay to play over there. And so my time, my 2 hours a week put on YouTube, the ROI is so much higher than anywhere else that I would create content. So I don't even create content on any other platform because my ROI is higher on YouTube. Remember, my YouTube traffic converts at 30%. Then I take my YouTube videos and I turn them into emails to my email list to warm all of those leads, keep those leads all warm. That are coming in through my webinars and maybe not buying on my webinars, but I'm keeping them warm until that next launch event. And YouTube is the feeder. Okay, you don't— but the thing that you need to realize, do you guys think that you could fit YouTube into your schedule if you start eliminating things? Let me know in the chat. Give me a yes or no if you're seeing an epiphany here that you're doing way too much and maybe focusing on YouTube will save you time. Give me a yes or no in the chat. 'Cause what you need to do, which is so important, you have to treat YouTube like a doctor's appointment, okay? You wouldn't cancel a doctor's appointment most times because it's probably gonna take you years to get back on the schedule, right? You cannot cancel your YouTube time because it's going to cancel your business growth. This is the main thing that has grown my business from day one, and that's why I just show up and I do YouTube because I know it is the reason why my business is at the point that it's at now. And it's the reason why I only have to work 20-hour weeks to get to the revenue that I need. So I know what you guys are thinking. You're thinking, but Trena, I have client work. As I said, I spend about 2 hours a day on client work, and then I have that additional time to work on my YouTube because YouTube is the system that brings my clients. So you don't have to always keep hustling for them. YouTube is your evergreen sales team, and that's what I'm going to show you how to build at the Build Your Big Reputation conference. So I want to make sure you do get your ticket for the Build Your Big Reputation conference because I'm going to show you how to build this system in your business so you can put the YouTube system in place. You can build the videos that will continue to sell for you so you can go get a massage on Friday, so you can go to Pilates in the morning and not show up at work as soon as the kids go to school, right? So that you You can take, you can take time off over vacation. And I just saw a question come in about how has AI impacted my business. It has been amazing because you know what, the one piece of content that AI recommends when people are asking for help or recommendations, people, AI will pull information from YouTube. And so guess what? I'm getting more traffic from AI and Claude than ever before. And I'm gonna tell you right now, your Instagram posts are not gonna get traffic from AI Cloud. So my business, my YouTube content is actually growing because of AI. And that's something we're going to talk about at the Reputation Conference. We're going to talk about how you utilize AI to recommend you, because if you're on YouTube, this is a huge opportunity for you right now. AI references YouTube content, and AI believes that YouTube content is more authoritative than short-form content. So AI is always going to recommend people who create YouTube content versus any other piece of content. So AI has been the best thing for my business because I'm showing up when people are asking AI for help around building a strategy on YouTube to generate leads and sales. So if this is hitting home for you and you're like, oh dude, I got to really focus on rinsing and repeating, go ahead and drop in the comments, no more side quests. If you're really going to start focusing on one offer, one transformation and one marketing event to do that because that has completely changed the game for me. Again, it's more of what I'm gonna talk about at the Build Your Big Reputation Conference. You've really gotta eliminate what's not working in your business. You've gotta understand the data and look at what is converting. You've gotta protect your schedule. You've gotta set those boundaries. So I did see Valerie, I do not have good boundaries. Valerie, we've gotta set some good boundaries for you here. And you have to treat YouTube and creating content for YouTube like it is a non-negotiable. And as I said, I'm going to teach you that entire system at the Build Your Big Reputation virtual conference. And this conference is for those of you that are serious about using YouTube to sell more of your offer. You have an offer, you're tired of trying to sell it on Instagram, you're tired of selling it on ads. Come to the Build Your Big Reputation virtual conference. I'm going to show you how to do that. Now I'm going to answer any questions that you have. Please drop your questions in the chat. I would love to answer any questions you have. But now that you know how I make time, on Thursday I'm going to show you where I'm sending people from YouTube. So I'm pulling my actual webinar conversion rates. I'm literally showing you everything. I'm going to show you my landing page, my registration page stats. I'm showing you my ad spend and the exact math on how my YouTube views turn into $156,000 in revenue. So you're not going to want to miss that on Thursday. Make sure you are subscribed. Subscribe so you get alerted when I do go live, um, and add it to your calendar. So does anybody today have any particular questions about protecting your time, setting boundaries, um, making YouTube your number one when it comes to content creation? Any questions? I did see that, um, I asked how, how many hours a week are you spending in your business. I see Michelle said 30+ hours. Um, so I'm just wondering, anybody else, how much time are you spending in your work or working, and how much time would you like to spend there? I'm not gonna lie, there was a time where I was spending 40+ hours in my business because I was constantly recreating from scratch, creating a new webinar, creating a new challenge, creating a new launch asset. And this is how creating Instagram content, creating Reels, doing stories— oh my gosh, stories. Stories was the death of me because it was like, okay, what do I need to post today? Do I need to add captions? Should I add a story? Like, not doing Instagram probably cut out a good 7 hours of work for me. So I love YTCE. I would love to do the full YouTube coaching experience. Michelle, if you would love to upgrade, reach out to us, trena@trenalittle.com, and I can send you over a discounted price point to upgrade if you'd like to upgrade and work with me one-on-one inside the YouTube coaching experience. So yeah, just reach out to me and we can send you a discounted upgrade. Simply Leechy, about 35 hours. Yes. So I assume, um, Simply Leechy, you're probably creating content somewhere other than YouTube. Um, where do you believe you're spending a majority of that time? Because that's what you really need to look at. Are you putting your time into things that are actually converting into revenue? And so that's what I had to do. I had to realize some of my low-ticket offers that I was focused on promoting in my YouTube videos or my Instagram stories, or even with ads weren't converting people to my YouTube coaching experience, which is my end goal. So once I eliminated needing to worry about low-ticket offers because that wasn't what feeding people, I realized that one, the webinar was helping me build my list to warm my audience. So then when I hosted a virtual conference like I'm going to be doing in a couple of weeks, I had a much more better list of people who wanted to come to the virtual conference that were much better suit for my YouTube coaching experience. And so that's why I was able to eliminate, you know, 80% of what I was doing because it felt like every time I launched, I had to start over planning the next launch and I would do it from scratch and then the next launch on top of Instagram content, LinkedIn content and all of that. I was able to just simply cut it to YouTube videos, emails to my email list, a weekly webinar that I did. I created like 8 months ago and I just rinse and repeat. All right, you guys, I'm going to be here on Thursday, same time. Like I said, I'm going to give you some more specific data and information on how my webinar has worked and how I've used YouTube to feed my webinar. So I'm pulling back all the numbers. I'm not lying to you about any of this stuff. I'm being completely transparent. That is a huge value that I hold in my business. So I hope to see some of you here on Thursday at 12 PM Eastern Standard time as well. Thank you guys so much for taking time to be here live, and I'll see you on Thursday. Bye!