The TRUTH behind my business

If you've been following my channel here, you'll notice the past couple of weeks there's been kind of a theme happening. I've been trying to really open up more about my story and share with you more behind the scenes information about me, my business and my YouTube channel. I had sent a survey out to my audience and a lot of you wanted to hear more things about me personally and specifically about the truth behind my business. Like, what is my business, how do I make money, and what does it even look like? If you're ready for me to pull the curtain back and see how my business runs behind scenes, hit that like button because we're gonna dig in. So if you're brand new to my channel, my name is trina. I'm a YouTube strategist and here on this channel, I help you find the confidence to show up on video. The first thing we're gonna talk about here when it comes to my business is how I stay organized. And so many of you wonder. You know, I'm a mom of a three and a five year old. They're currently home right now due to coronavirus. And my husband has been home since March as well. So we've had to share this small office together. The thing that's really important for me is plan and scheduling things. So right now my mom quarantined with us, so she was here on Tuesdays and Thursdays to watch the kids. So I had a full two days and then my husband took care of the kids on Saturdays and Sundays. So then I had another two days. So I really had to determine what was going to be the best things for me to focus on. During the time that I did have. Many of you have asked me about this color coded calendar and that's one of the ways I stay organized. I'm able to see by colors exactly what is due that day. So if I have a podcast interview that day, if, if I have to get videos to my editor that day, that is a quick look for me and then more detailed. I use asana. This tool has been literally game changer. I'm able to set dates on it, I'm able to go in when I can work, which is just four days, I can go into my tasks and immediately see what needs to be worked on that day. I'm not wasting any of my time trying to figure out my to do list. It's all in there for me. And it hasn't been easy figuring out a balance. I have burnt myself out many times and felt overwhelmed. Plenty of Times as well. But after doing this for about five years, I finally realized that I need to just focus on three big things every single day. That's pretty much all I can get done. And when I start to tackle on more and more things, more than three, that's when I don't get things done. That's when I start freaking out. And if you're an Enneagram person, I'm an enneagram3. So for me to not get something done on my checklist, that's just out of my world. It just messes with me. So I need to really make sure that I am able to complete what I actually write down. So that's how I'm staying productive. I'm thinking about, realistically, three things I can get done for four days a week. Now let's talk about how do I have a team and what does my team do? First, it's important for me to tell you that I had no team whatsoever for a good three years. When I got started in my business, there were different things that I hired people for for like different projects. Maybe like launch copy or sales page copy. I hired my dear friend Ashlyn for that. For pretty much an ongoing team member I did not have for a good three years into my business. But what I realized was I would not be able to get everything done. And there were some things that I knew would help move the needle on my if I could find somebody who did that better than me. So the very first hire that I made was a graphic designer who is Ilia. She's been on my team the longest, and I hired her specifically to help me create better thumbnails. Many of you know that YouTube is my primary marketing plan. I use YouTube to get in front of more people, to get people to know who I am, to build that trust and to get them into my funnel offline. So for me to be able to reach more people on YouTube, I needed to have better thumbnails that would increase my click through rates. When I did hire her, she was also creating pins for me on Pinterest because I was getting a bulk of my traffic from YouTube, also from Pinterest. So a majority of my traffic to my website was YouTube and Pinterest. And then external traffic source to YouTube was Pinterest. So I knew those would be the biggest things that would move my business forward. So since I talked about Pinterest after a while of having Ilia create these graphics and seeing the power Pinterest was having on my business and driving leads to my business. I knew I had to double down on Pinterest. I didn't have the time to figure it out. So I hired my Pinterest strategy, Vanessa. So Vanessa has probably been working with me just a couple months longer than Ilya. They're my two oldest team members. As in length, they've been hired and they've been working for me for probably two to three years. I don't remember the exact date, but they've both been on my team helping me really grow my business. The next person that I hired was a video editor and I knew I needed to spend more time creating a good course. I had created the course, but I really wanted to figure out how to take this course to the next level and help people see results inside of my course. So I needed more of my time. So I decided to outsource my editing because that was taking a bunch of my time. I actually hired a friend of mine who I knew knew how to edit, but I knew that I could train on how to edit YouTube specifically. It's so hard to find an editor that understands YouTube editing because it's totally different than like videography or sales videos or anything like that. So since he was local, I was able to actually talk to him face to face and really work through the moving pieces of a YouTube video and get that off of my hands and actually like the results that I got from the editor without constantly going back and forth on changes. Joe now has moved into a position in my business inside of my agency side where he's an assistant YouTube strategy and works with my one on one clients with me. So he needed to be replaced. And so now I have Annabelle who does all my editing and she does my editing for here on YouTube. She then takes this YouTube video, turns it into a Facebook version, turns it into Instagram TV version, and also creates the Instagram teaser clips for me and all of the clients inside of my agency as well. So when you work with me inside my agency, you're getting all your videos edited for YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Instagram stories. And the last person that I do have on my team is pretty much my right hand person. Her name is Erin. She really helps with customer service inside of my video strategy academy. She's making sure everybody's questions get answered when I don't have time. So if I'm working on a client strategy, she covers that. She covers all the scheduling for the calls there. She also gets my videos uploaded. She also works on some of the analyzing of clients YouTube channels as well. She's kind of become this jack of all trades for me. And again, my right hand person who does all the things that I just can't get to, she's been in my business for almost a year now. So it's really easy for me to put a task inside of Asana and assign it to her and know that whenever that deadline is set, she's going to get that done. Now, in addition to human help, I also have a lot of software and systems that allow me to automate things in my business. So things that can work without me having to touch them. So some of the tools that I is My biggest hub of lead generation is ConvertKit, which is my email system. So when people watch a YouTube video here and I tell them to sign up for a webinar training or a freebie, they sign up through ConvertKit and then they become part of my email list. Specifically they go through a series of emails that build trust with them and then I pitch them my course. This is basically how I am making sales. So today, this afternoon, while I am filming these, I've had two notifications of two new sales that have just happened organically through the funnel while I'm filming videos. And that's how I'm able to have the time to do everything is by having this system in place that allows me to create sales while I'm working on other things or while I'm spending time with my family. So let's rewind it a second here. People are actually going to a landing page to get my webinar or my opt in and that landing page is called LeadPages. This isn't necessary to something I happen to sign up for years ago and a lot of my systems are set up through that. So they go to LeadPages to enter their email address which is then connected to ConvertKit. But ConvertKit can do all that for you. So I just wanted to explain the two different tools there. Then I host my course inside of a program called Teachable. Inside of Teachable, I'm able to upload all my training videos, all my PDFs, all my documents. We also have weekly calls inside the VIP option. So we record those calls and upload them to Teachable as well. And then people are able to check out and buy my course through another software called ThriveCart. The reason I use ThriveCart is because it accepts accepts payments like PayPal credit and it gives me a little bit more analytical data than the Teachable checkout page does. But Teachable can do all that for you as well. And again, this is all automated. Once they sign up and buy, they're automatically added into my course and they can get started within five minutes. So there's people that sign up this morning. They're probably already in my course watching it. They've probably already requested to become part of the Facebook group, which I'm gonna have to let them in after this video. But that's how you can really start generating this money without having to spend all your time doing something. So let me talk about the one on one side. We talked a little bit about the core side. I do have a one on one side where we have an agency and inside the agency we craft the strategy, we come up with the titles and the calls to action. All the client has to do is film the video. We then edit it, upload it, optimize and give them reports. So we manage that through a project manager called Dubsado. This is where we send out contracts, this is where we send out invoices, this is where we send out questionnaires to get a sense of how they're feeling with our services, what we need to do better. So I use Dubsado and automate all of that so that they're automating their invoices. Once they sign up for my service, they're automatically scheduled a one on one call with me, an onboarding call. So that's the program that automates my one on one agency side. As far as graphics that you see here on my YouTube channel or on Pinterest or inside of my course, I use Canva and we create templates in Canva to really be able to create them quickly and consistently. And then we save all of these videos and we're able to get our clients videos and stuff through Google Suite. So we use a lot of Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Slides are huge for us in our business. I think I've mentioned before Asana, but it's basically how I'm able to assign everybody in my team tasks and deadlines so that I make sure that it's done. And we do do some communication inside of Slack. So again, I'm just kind of dumping all of these things on you. If you want me to go into more detail about these, let me know in the comments that you want to see a more detailed video about one of these. I don't know if that's something that you're interested in, but these are kind of all the moving pieces that help my business run smoothly. Then the last thing that we have is kind of like social media automation is planoly. We use that for Instagra, Instagram and Tailwind. We use that to automate our pins on Pinterest and Vanessa handles all of that. Now you've kind of got a sense of where my streams of income are coming from. But let me walk you through exactly how I'm making money. Like why am I putting these videos up? Where's the money coming from? Because I'm going to tell you, it's not from AdSense here on YouTube. I make about $300 a month on YouTube AdSense and that does not even cover grocery store bills. I've gone through quite a few different services, but here are the services that we've nailed down to that our clients seem to love the most. So I talked about the agency side. So a client will fill out a form to apply to be an agency client. We look at that, we really make sure that they understand YouTube. So when we base this strategy, this YouTube strategy for them, they understand it. And we're able to get results from somebody who can understand the basics of YouTube. We're also looking for different things like what are their expectations, what are their goals and is it going to be a right fit for us in the agency. From there, like I said, we craft their entire YouTube strategy. We give them the title of the video that they should create. We help them script their videos. If they have questions about scripting, we tell them what call to action that video should have. We then edit it, upload it, create the thumbnail, optimize it. And then every single month they get a monthly report from us to show them what's doing well on their YouTube channel and where we should go that next month with their strategy. I do also offer one on one strategy sessions. So these are 60 minute sessions where you apply to be a strategy session. I will then review your channel before we even get on a phone call and give you a detailed review of your channel and a game plan. Then when we get on that call, I talk about, here's the things I saw, here's the things I think that you should work on. What questions do you have? And so that's all recorded and you get that video saved as well. That recording saves so you don't have to worry about scribbling every single note down and remembering things. Then we have the course side. So the video strategy academy is my main course. I recently had a couple courses. I decided to just drive it all into one complete course. So it's kind of like your go to Stop for everything Video strategy. Inside of Video Strategy Academy, I teach you the YouTube strategy we use with our clients and the YouTube strategy that will help you grow a YouTube channel. But then I teach you how to use those YouTube videos on other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. So you have a full and complete video strategy once you complete that entire program. And we do have two tiers for that particular program. We have the self paced VSA which there is a Facebook group for it. But we also have the VIP where we have coaching calls every single month. We have guest experts come in and talk to us about things like branding, creating thumbnails, creating email lists, a little more business centric experts that help students in the VIP to really use their YouTube videos to that next level in their business. I also have some affiliate income as well. So when I talk about a product or a service and you buy from my link, I make a commission. So one of those affiliates is Tubebuddy. I've made about $5,000 commission from TubeBuddy by talking about them and people signing up through my affiliate link. I also do joint venture webinars with other entrepreneurs as well. So they will come into my audience and teach something super amazing and pitch one of their programs and anybody that their program, I get commission as well. So that's another way I'm generating income into my business as well. So with all of that, how much are you really making, Trina? So last year 2019, we rounded out about $160,000 in revenue. And for me that was $60,000 over my goal. I know exactly what I need to make. I am not out to make a million dollars. That is not my goal. I'm out to make enough money that I can afford to go on vacation for two weeks with my family. But I can just work a couple days a week and still fulfill my dream of teaching and help business owners. And so I don't need to make this significant amount of money to be happy. I only need to make. Last year my goal was a hundred thousand dollars. Like I said, I surpassed that with all the different things that I talked about you here today. Remember we also have to take out all the expenses as well. So all of those programs that I talked about, like Convertkit and Lee Pages, plus everybody on my team, I have to pay as well. At the time of recording this video, we've already hit $70,000 in revenue. So we might actually hit $200,000 this year. And that is more than enough. We also have another launch plan towards the end of this year and that really bumps up our revenue so who knows what we could make. But it's all because of these different streams of income. It's not just coming from my course, it's not just coming from my one on one services. It's not just coming from affiliate. I've really diversified how I'm making my money. I'm curious when it comes to making money in your business would you like to see more business videos like this? Let me know what specific topics that you would like to see me to go more detail in when it comes to using YouTube to build a business. Then once you share that down below watch this video that's on your screen right now because I'm going to tell you some of the best digital products that you can start selling to make that passive income. You know those sales while you're recording YouTube videos. So click it on your screen right now and I'll see you over there.