Speaker 1: Hey sis, welcome back to my channel and welcome to Wellness Wednesday. Today on Wellness Wednesday we'll be covering balance. So many of you guys reach out to me and say hey I have a nine-to-five everything you're teaching me is amazing but with my job it's just unrealistic for me to be able to do all of the things you're telling me I can do to make money online. How can I balance all of this with my nine-to-five? Well I'm glad that you guys asked because guess what I wasn't always a full-time content creator. That's right your girl had a nine-to-five. I worked since I was 15 years old. Yes girl I was still in high school and up until 2020 I worked as an HR manager for a litigation firm. So I know all too well about balancing content creation and a nine-to-five because before I left my job in 2020 your girl was doing just that, a balancing act. So let me give you today the tips on what you can do to balance your nine-to-five and your dreams and aspirations until you can become a full-time content creator. Let's get into it. So I'm gonna give you the steps on what I did to go into full-time content creation. So my week started on Saturday. On Saturday I did all of my research. This was me figuring out what type of content I wanted to make. So for example at the time my primary platform was Instagram. I made all of my money from Instagram and so on Saturdays I would sit down and I would just scroll through to see what reel or post that I really resonated with that I would like to recreate for my audience or I would just write down ideas that I came up with through the week that I would like to create for my audience. After I had this category of all of the things that I wanted to recreate or create on my own I would then record all of it and since I was primarily on Instagram that means I'm recording about five different reels and putting together about two different posts or carousel and that would be my Saturday. Come Sunday I would edit all of that content. So all of the reels would get edited. All of the posts that were gonna go up would be edited as well as the captions and hashtags for each one of those posts. Now you can do this in Notion like I did or you can do it in your notes section. Whatever is best for you. Now you have Saturday and Sunday. Now comes the weekday Monday through Friday. So I would use Monday through Friday on my lunch break to post all of my content. That's when I was able to post. You can also use the scheduling systems that Instagram now have, TikTok now has, and I believe even Twitter has. Or you can use a program like Later or Planoly that will plan and post for you. Me personally back then I was a hundred percent okay with just posting myself and so I would use my lunch break to just throw my post up. Now during the week Monday through Friday I got up at 5 o'clock. By getting up at 5 a.m. I was able to get my workouts in as well as eat my breakfast and then sit down. So I would sit down about 6.30 and from 6.30 to 7.30 I would work on pitching to different types of brands. This was my time to pitch brands, respond to comments, respond to posts, and comment on other people's posts so I could actually be social on social media. By 7.30 I had to wrap it up because my son would be up and I would have to get him fed and out of the door no later than 7.55 to get him to school by 8 o'clock. Most days he would just eat breakfast at school and because he was around the age of 9 he would get up and get himself dressed all ready to go. So that was a bonus for those who do have smaller toddlers. I didn't have to do much before work care for him since he was pretty independent. And then after work I would get off work Monday through Friday and after we got home I cooked dinner. I would help him with his homework. He would go to bed at 8.30. So I had from 8.30 until 10.30 to myself. I would get ready for bed and then I would use one hour to again respond to comments, respond to any brands that I pitched if they responded back to me via email, and comment on other people's posts that I followed to be social on social media. And then come Saturday I would start my week all over again. One thing that helped me prepare for Saturdays was as I was scrolling throughout the week saving different pieces of content into a content inspiration folder. That way when Saturday come I didn't have to go looking for content. I could just have a list of things already there. Even now in my notion I have a running log of all types of ideas of content that I want to shoot. I have dates associated with it. I have notes. I have links to inspired content that led me to this idea and so forth. So when I'm ready to sit down and ask myself what do I want to film today? I already have a list of things that I can choose from. This saves so much time. That's how I ran my Instagram and got it to about 75,000 followers while having a full-time job. Okay so now you're saying well Crystal I don't have an Instagram let alone a TikTok. I simply am on YouTube. How can I get my YouTube content done if I have a nine-to-five? Well I'm glad you asked. Even though I wasn't doing YouTube back then here is a schedule that you could use that is similar to the one that we just used for Instagram that I used back in the days. Your week would start on Saturday and same thing you would do your research. So you're looking to see okay what content is trending right now? What do I want to jump on? What do I think my audience would benefit or like most to see from me this week? You're going to script out your video if you're doing one video a week or even three videos for the week. Saturday is your day so you're scripting everything. You're taking your thumbnail picture and you're coming up with your title and then you're recording. Yes that means you could be recording up to three YouTube videos in one day and I'm not even done. You're also gonna film three YouTube shorts as well. So even if you're filming one video for YouTube I still need you to do at least three shorts or if you're filming three videos for YouTube I still need you to give me three shorts and this is all on Saturday. Come Sunday you're gonna edit all of your YouTube videos whether that was one video or three videos and you're going to edit three of those shorts as well. Monday through Friday you're going to post your YouTube content on your lunch break. For some of you you'll be able to do everything from your phone especially if you record your YouTube videos on your phone still. For others you might actually have to have your iPad or even your tablet to get this done but it is doable. You are also gonna post on your lunch break one short every other day. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday since you have three shorts. Your short content should consist of whatever you want it to consist of but at least one if not two of those shorts need to actually be some type of traffic driver for the long-form content that's also being submitted that day or that week. For example let's say I do one YouTube video a week and my videos are about flying cats. I don't know why I said that. Well I'm gonna create three YouTube shorts. I can make them about anything but at least one if not two of them are gonna talk about the latest video about flying cats that I'm actually posting that week on my channel. If I have one YouTube video that I'm filming it'll go out on Monday and then at least one if not two of my YouTube shorts will go out on Wednesday and Friday and both of those will talk about the long-form video that went out on Monday to help drive traffic to that one video. Because you're only posting one video a week you want to make sure you have some type of traffic drivers to that content. If you're posting three videos a week, three long-form videos, one on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on your lunch break, your three YouTube shorts, again one of them can be used to drive traffic to one of your long-form videos or you can use all three and each one of those shorts drives traffic to the long-form video that was posted on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Monday through Friday before work for one hour you're pitching brands, you're emailing them back and forth, you're reaching out for YouTube collabs, and you're responding to any comments that were left on your video. And then Monday through Friday after work you are responding back to brands that you emailed let's say in the morning. And if you want to shorten your time on Saturday I would even script out my videos and get my thumbnails ready for the week. Since your week starts over every Saturday this will reduce how much work you actually have one Saturday. Now I know that I've been mentioning pitching to brands. If you're not thinking about pitching that saves you extra time that you don't have to waste and you can use that responding to comments or doing further research. If you do pitch brands and you need help of pitching I have tons of videos here on YouTube that can help you with that as well as a pitching guide that I use to get all of my brand deals for UGC. And if you've been following me for a while you know that I made over $100,000 just doing UGC last year alone. And primarily most of those were from pitching. Now I know some of you are gonna say I'm not on just Instagram and I'm not just on YouTube. I'm on YouTube and Instagram. Well this type of schedule can be used for multiple platforms as well. You just decide how many YouTube videos are you gonna do. For example if you're gonna do one a week but you're gonna do five reels. Your reels can double as YouTube shorts so you don't have to create three YouTube shorts. Everything's still getting filmed on Saturday and edited on Sunday and you're still using your lunch break to put up all of the content. That's what worked best for me and that's what worked for me. But here are some key tips that you're going to have to implement to really make sure all of this can get done while maintaining your nine-to-five. First thing first you're going to have to get some type of organization in. I personally will recommend Google Calendar because that's what I use at the time. Since I had to watch my calendar as an HR manager I figured why not just have multiple calendars. And so using Google Calendar really helped me out with planning my day-to-day so I could make sure I was on time and on schedule with all of my content. I'm talking about I used every single hour on Saturdays and put exactly what I was doing. Video one is gonna be from 8 to 9. My reels are gonna be from 9 to 12. Having this type of organization really helped me structure my day and helped me with reminders because I would be ready to go to lunch and my phone would go off with my Google Calendar alert telling me that I had to do a post and I was just about to walk out the building and go chop it up with my friends for lunch. I would make sure I got my post done first before going to bump my gums. Now I use Notion. It's just as great as Google Calendar for me because but the reason why I do like Notion is because I'm able to do the hourly block steal as well as set a timer. Since I am sitting at my desk having this in front of me go off while I'm working on different projects really helps me especially on Saturdays when I'm scrolling for that inspiration. Sometimes I just get lost in the sauce and your girl will be down a whole rabbit hole when I'm supposed to be just online getting inspiration so I can film my videos. Having those timers and those time blocks in place on Notion have been life-changing. The next tip I would give you is to track your progress. It's so easy to get discouraged at the end of the month you're doing all of this work and you only gained a hundred followers but if you start to measure and track what you've actually done so you can look back and say wow I actually did a video every week for my YouTube or you know what I only did one video this month so yeah I only gained 200 followers but look I wasn't consistent with my work. There was many times I did not grow month to month but then I would sit back and say you hardly posted, you didn't stick to your schedule, you didn't use your lunch breaks properly, you were trying to squeeze videos in at night and get post done at night when no one was online. No wonder your videos didn't go far and the algorithm just spit them out but I was only able to see this because I began to track those habits. So every time I completed posting a video at lunch, I used my hour in the morning, I used my hour at night, I just kept track of those things. And my last tip is going to be balance. Remember I use this schedule as a part-time content creator and a full-time employee and it was great until it wasn't. One thing I will tell you is I did burn out using this schedule. Working this many days a week caused me to go into a place where I just did not want to create and I didn't think that content creation was fun anymore. Especially when it didn't result in me making more money. Since for some reason I got the notion that success was tied to income. I think I got that from Instagram. Instagram will do that to you but that's another story for the day. So even though this is a great schedule and it can work, Crystal now as a content creator has to be responsible and let you know that I personally would not work seven days. It's just not worth it for me. Looking back in hindsight, seeing where I am in regards to all of my health issues, I wish I took at least one if not two days off. And you're probably asking, well Crystal then how does the schedule work if I take a day off? Just move something to another day. For example, all the editing that you were going to be doing on Sunday, that can be done Monday morning and Monday afternoon especially if you're not pitching brands right now. You can use that time to edit all your content so it can still go out at lunch on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This gives you a whole day of Sunday to yourself. Same thing if you don't want to record on Saturdays, maybe you can use Monday through Friday. The first hour of the day is spent just recording. So you can record on Monday and Tuesdays and you can edit everything Wednesdays and Thursdays. And all of the content that you did for that week is something that you're going to be using for the following week. So you're always a week ahead. That's kind of how I have my YouTube set up now. Even though I'm filming this today which is Friday March 1st, you guys aren't going to see this until Wednesday March I think it's the 6th. So everything I do in this week is used for the following week. Let me know if this was helpful. I hope this helps you guys get an idea of how you can balance your 9 to 5 with your goals of becoming a content creator. And if you're interested in how I currently do my schedule as a full-time content creator or should I say full-time YouTuber because I did let go of all of my clients to go all-in on YouTube, leave me a comment below. Give me a thumbs up and let me know if that's something you're interested in. Because I would love to take you guys through a day in the life. Because I would love to walk you guys through my day-to-day, week-to- week on what I do managing my schedule now as a full-time content creator and how I get everything done. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. If you don't take anything away out of everything I said, the one thing I really want you to hold on to is making sure you balance. Remember today is Wellness Wednesday and the purpose of this video is for you to be able to balance it all. Even though the schedule worked for me until it didn't, if it doesn't work for you, find something that does. But don't keep making excuses and saying you're gonna start and then you don't. Or you start and then you stop. Find a schedule that works for you where you can be consistent and show up for those people who need you. Trust me, even if you're getting a hundred views and three likes, those hundred people, those three likes needed your content. And if you stay consistent, that three will turn into 30,000. Trust me, the world is waiting on your content. You just got to get consistent. I'll see you guys on Friday for Freestyle Friday. I hope you have an amazing day and as always, go be intentional with having a blessed day.