Balancing a Full-Time Job and YouTube: Jessica's Journey to 340K Subscribers (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: How to become a content creator and maintain a full-time job. Hi, my name is Jessica. I've been working in the media for the last 21 years. A radio and TV personality and programs manager for both radio and TV. As programs manager, I'm also in charge of events and promotions for my station. I'm a voice actor. You have one minute remaining. My most popular voiceovers you most likely hear on Ghana's number one telecommunication network MTN every day. As a personal gig, I run a small voiceover business called The Voiceover Company, where I create radio ads from the scratch till they're ready to air. I love to work to improve my fitness every chance I get. I also love to ride motorcycles. My passion for riding led me to create Ghana's foremost all-female motorcycle club, Biker Girls GH, a community of women who support each other and embark on charitable events. In my life, there's always something to do. There's never a dull moment. Then, of course, there's YouTube. In March 2020, when COVID hit, I was one of the people who was affected financially. It was two things. Either you quit your job or you took a pay cut. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. At that point in time, the lockdown had happened. This was in March 2020. Lockdown had happened, and we were just trying to find some level of normalcy. That was hard, though, because life had suddenly changed. The world was on its knees, and we had to find ways to improvise. What led me to YouTube was just the fact that my income had reduced, understandably so. The times called for it, but my expenditure remained the same. I have some fixed expenditures that I make every single month. I needed to find another source of income. I went to YouTube, looked at a couple of creators that I had chanced upon, and said to myself, well, if they've been doing this and I've been doing radio, I've been in the media for 21 years, there's certainly something that I have to offer as well, or I could offer as well. I just jumped into it with both legs. In July, I think on the 4th of July 2020, I posted my first YouTube video. It was not the first video for my channel, because prior to that, I had been posting every now and again, didn't know much about YouTube, treating YouTube like most people do. You have some funny video, some random video, you upload it, just to see how it does. You get like 23 views. One of my lights went out. Life of a YouTuber. Unfortunately, I do not have time to charge up that light, but that's an indication that I need to finish this recording quick. It'll be slightly darker, but I guess it should work. Upload it to YouTube, get about 23 views, and lick your wounds, and say and decide that YouTube is not for you. I was quite excited about my first video, and it was 10 Proven Ways to Lose Weight Without Exercise. I was so excited. I thought that, hmm, this was the video for me. This was the video that was going to break the internet. I remember when I posted that video, I got 200 views, maybe 300. I was so brokenhearted, but I said to myself, you know what? It's worth a try. Just keep going, keep posting. I was posting one video a week. Now, three months into posting consistently, so technically I'd done about maybe 12 videos, my channel got monetized, and I was over the moon. I remember the first day I made $1.25 on YouTube. I was jumping up and down like a crazy woman. I mean, just the thought of being able to make revenue on the internet was completely fascinating for me. Yeah, I think once the channel started making money, I was motivated to do more. Once my channel got monetized, I realized that, hmm, four videos a month may not cut it, and I increased my weekly posts to two. I was posting twice a week. Let's just say a year and about four months later, my channel is almost at 340,000 subscribers, and the rest is history. I spent my very early days on YouTube just testing content, you know, trying out content to see what would stick, what resonated more with my audience, and I realized that whenever I posted relationship videos, I'd get a spike in my views, you know, where my average video views would be around, say, 2,000, 3,000. Whenever I posted a relationship video, I'd hit, like, 20K, 30K, kind of thing. So I decided about six months ago to niche down, if there's a word like that. I decided to just create a niche for myself and, you know, make relationship videos, and that's when my channel really began to take off. It's not been an easy journey. I'm not even trying to preach to you and make it seem glamorous. It's been very difficult because, as you know, I'm a full-time worker. I work for someone else, and trying to find, like, the perfect balance between my YouTube channel, which is growing so rapidly and has become, like, financially liberating, it's a matter of trying to find the perfect balance. Now, speaking of balance, it's not been easy at all because not a lot of people actually know that. I do not have anyone who works with me on my channel. I've been posting and creating content by myself, and it hasn't been easy. I learned how to create content by watching YouTube videos, how to set up my lighting, sound, what I needed. When the channel started to make money, I bought gear, you know, reinvesting into the channel and that kind of thing. So up until now, I haven't had any kind of external help, unless, of course, there was a shoot that required that I go outside my house to shoot. Then I'd have to, of course, hire the services of, say, a videographer for the day. But most of my videos are just talking heads, and everything you see on this channel is created by me. So that takes a lot of time. Anybody who edits videos will tell you. It's time-consuming, and I think, for me, that's probably the downside to it, you know, because I typically get to work at 8 a.m. I'm there till about when I get off air at 5.30 p.m. Sit in traffic, get home, say, about 7, 7.30 p.m. It depends on the day. And when I get home, I have to set up, record the video, edit, upload before morning. So there are many nights that I go to bed at midnight, a little sacrifice to make for what I want. My weekends, on a very good weekend, if I have no extracurricular activities or responsibilities or things to get through, I would typically set up and try and shoot as many videos as I can. I'm not always successful, though, because someway, somehow, there's always something to do, right? So this is Ghana, you know, you're going to weddings or funerals or, you know, there's stuff, extracurricular stuff. Don't forget I'm a biker as well, and so there are so many activities in between. But I try to make the most of my time, and I think that is what has pretty much kept me afloat. Up until this month, I have been posting consistently two videos every week. This month, I increased the videos to three videos a week, and this is just me trying to see what's possible and something that wouldn't be too difficult to manage as a schedule and also try to figure out what would best work for me, such that it doesn't interfere with my daytime job. Listen, being a full-time YouTuber requires a lot of passion for what you do, discipline, because you're not always going to feel like setting up and shooting. Setting up, tearing down alone takes a lot of time, you know, so you're going to have to be disciplined enough to want to pull this through. You're going to have to be consistent. If there are five things I can share with you if you'd like to still maintain your full-time job and be a YouTuber, these would be it. First, there are really no off days. You would require planning, discipline, and execution to be able to complete your task. Number two, you will have to perfect your art of multitasking. It's not easy juggling a full-time job and still having time for your part-time job. So if you're not someone who's able to juggle multiple tasks at a time, there'll always be a couple of, you know, aspects of your job or your life that would suffer for it. You'd have to sacrifice to be able to, you know, continuously create content. For number three, I'd say be careful not to drop the ball on your main job because obviously that's probably what will sustain you, especially in the beginning when your channel's still growing, probably hasn't been monetized, you know, or is monetized, but you're not making that much money from. So if you sort of cannibalize your own main job in your pursuit of creating content on YouTube, you might find yourself in a fix. So you need to really be able to find, like, a perfect balance. For number four, I'd say delegate what you can. Certainly the option and the road that I chose to walk has not been an easy one. And to be honest, I'm looking at probably employing a person or two, maybe come next year. But yes, you know, delegate what you can. It always helps, and sometimes you move faster when you have other hands in the business. And finally, you must know that this is going to be a big sacrifice. And sometimes you may have to sacrifice your time with your friends, time with your family, time with your partner or your spouse, but there has to be some sacrifice on some kind of level. And so, yeah, I mean, these are my thoughts, really, on being a YouTuber and also working full-time. Definitely not easy. Is it impossible to do? Look at me. A couple of months in, I'm still here. I still have my job, so I guess I'm doing something right. Do I intend to go full-time? I don't know what the future holds, to be honest. But I think the possibilities are endless. And who knows? I'm sure if I go full-time, you'll find out about it. So, yeah, that's about it from me. My name is Jessica. I am tempted to say that if you like this video, you can smash the like button. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on all notifications as well, so you get a notification every single time I post. It's weird. Thank you.