So I want to share with you how and why I work five hours a day
in my business and not like eight or nine hours and how I
was able to grow my business working five hours a day, while
still earning a full time income from the business. Hey, I don't
know if this is gonna stay up here. But we'll try this is a
little off topic off the norm from what I cover here on my
YouTube channel. But this, this is, this is real life for me and
I want to share it with you. And maybe you'll get a few bits of
useful information that you can apply to your business or side
business moving forward. If you are new here. My name is
Meredith Marsh. And this channel is dedicated to helping your
YouTube side hustle,
thrive.
So a couple years ago, I drove by the carwash in my town and I
thought that's like the ultimate business model right there.
Please wait, thank you, please. People come on their own. they
wash their car, either in the Do It Yourself Bay, or the you
know, the touchless fancy day they vacuum it if they want to.
They grab an air freshener from the vending machine if they need
it's completely self serve. The owner shows up does some
maintenance does some upkeep and my perception is like the
hardest thing about owning a carwash is counting the quarters
in the dollar bills that people put into the machines and then
taking them to the bank, right. And I thought that must be nice.
And that's like the cue for my brain to recognize that there's
something that I want that I don't currently have. I don't
want a carwash but when I can stop and say, how could I have
that? or How could that work for me work for my business in this
case, then my mind starts to ask better questions and kind of
tackle that question. And a whole mindset shift starts to
take place. So he started thinking about ways that I could
make my business operate more like a carwash, you know,
streamlined, systematized? You know, we do one thing, we do it
in multiple ways. And as long as we're getting traffic, the
business kind of runs itself. So let me put this into the context
of my actual business model. Because a lot of people don't
talk about this. A lot of business entrepreneurial types
don't put the business model into context, when they talk
about things like growing, scaling, outsourcing,
success metrics.
And all of those things are variables that are different
based on the business model, like on how the business
actually makes money. So my business has multiple streams of
revenue. But all of that revenue is coming from kind of one main
source is coming from eyeballs, it's coming from traffic, people
watching my videos, people landing on my blog posts, so I
create videos for YouTube, like I'm doing right now I publish
those videos. And then when people watch those videos,
YouTube gives me a cut of the ad revenue. Now I don't have to
publish a new video every day or every week in order for that to
happen. I have a library of videos on my channel, they get
views, they earn revenue, whether I published them a month
ago or you know, or even years ago. And that is one of the main
keys to the whole working five hours a day thing, those videos
get turned into blog posts, and my blog is part of the media
vine ad network. So I'm earning revenue that way as well. And
when I mentioned a product or software in my videos or my blog
posts, I link to those using affiliate links. So I get a
commission, if somebody makes a purchase based on my
recommendation, without it costing any extra for that
person, this is affiliate marketing. Now sometimes I work
with brands who want to sponsor a video. So they'll pay a lump
sum in exchange for me creating a video featuring their product,
for example, I don't do a lot of brand deals anymore. They can be
kind of time consuming and really energy draining for me.
And so I would rather put my time and energy into creating
content that promotes my own products, all of which are
digital. So I have my membership program, the video pursuit
society where I support content creators to start and grow their
online business using YouTube and that's my signature program.
We have a whole membership portal we have monthly q&a calls
a monthly action plans a private Facebook group. It's a really
supportive fun group of content creators mostly part time side
hustle content creators. I love showing up giving them my full
support answering questions and helping them out over any
hurdles that they're having. A couple more of my digital
products include social video Pro, which is like YouTube video
editing for beginners, and the earn 1k a month with YouTube
workshop, which is brand new. But the reason why I list out
all of those different revenue streams is to put this whole
business model into context.
Because I might have listed something that you don't have in
your business model. Or maybe I didn't list something that you
do have in your business, or that you do envision for your
business, for example, client work, I don't perform any
services, you can't hire me to do something for you. I don't
want to spend my time doing that I don't do a lot of one on one,
and consulting again, because it takes time and it takes energy
and I only have five hours a day. So let's talk about that.
So it all comes down to the school bus. And mainly the fact
that I am the school bus for my kids, where we live. And the
times that my kids school starts, it just works out that I
have five hours a day, in my office at my desk, you know,
dedicated distraction free work time, can I work in the evenings
to get a few more hours into my workday? Sometimes Yes, I could,
but usually no. And for the most part, I don't really want to, I
have a kid in high school sports. My spouse has a job
where his work hours don't always have like an end time.
And so a lot of times I do some work on my iPad, but it's
usually not the most highly productive type of work. It's
like responding to email, when I started creating content six or
seven years ago, I was working full time I started my blog and
my YouTube channel. And then about a year and a half later,
my job, let me go of the for the record, I wasn't fired, they
eliminated my position. So instead of going to get a new
job, I just put my time and energy into this business that
you see here. So there were definitely years where I did
work eight or nine, or 12 or 14 hours a day. Because I was
building my business, I was enjoying what I was doing. And I
was learning how to build a business. I really like my work.
I like all of the nitty gritty, nerdy details of online
business. So it doesn't always feel good to leave my desk at
2pm. Every single day. Sometimes I'm working on something and I'm
in the zone, you know, when you're in the zone, and it
doesn't always feel good to get up and leave for this season of
life. This is where I'm at I'm at five hours a day. So how do
we get everything done, and grow the business working 25 hours a
week? Well, first of all, I have how I have three virtual
assistants, which saying that out loud sounds like a lot
alijah Stephanie and Cynthia have specific roles and specific
tasks that they are responsible for. And they're all part time.
The things that I myself I'm not personally doing in the business
are the things like turning the videos into blog posts, turning
them into igtv videos, sending out emails, when I have a new
video, if you're on my email list, you're probably getting
those every once in a while at least we have systems and
processes in place for all of those different things. And
hiring and managing a team has been a huge learning curve. For
me, I've never done it before. But without this team, I
wouldn't be able to focus on the things that make the business
grow. And this is where the carwash concept comes in.
Because as a team, they keep all of the moving parts running. Not
completely without me but quite a bit without me. Even if I
don't publish a YouTube video. every single week, there are
still things that can be done. So like updating older blog
posts revamping the SEO on older blog posts, sending out emails,
traffic is traffic, whether it is on a brand new piece of
content, a brand new YouTube video, or an older blog post and
running VPS. My membership is pretty much the same process
every month. Yes, I show up for the q&a calls. Yes, I show up
every day inside of the Facebook group. But the processes for
what we do in there are the same month to month. It's very much
like a rinse and repeat kind of cycle. Now, logistically
Mondays, I like to call Monday my CEO day. So this is the day
that I look at
what needs to be done this week, of course, but also what were we
working on last week that needs to be carried over so that we
can keep working on it or complete it? And I touch base
with my team members usually through either zoom or slack and
figure out what are you working on? What are you going to get
done this week? What do you need from me in order to complete
your tasks for the week and then The rest of the days of the
week, I am just fulfilling on those task items the to do list
whatever it is that I'm working on. When it comes to growing the
business, the second thing is managing my energy. And without
going completely woo on you in this video, I've been working on
embodying my Human Design through the help of my friend
Lauren, I'll put a link down below. And it's been really eye
opening for me in learning. what works best for me in making
decisions, business related decisions, what I should be
working on versus what I should be outsourcing. And the biggest.
I mean, like the biggest breakthrough there has been
realizing the difference between outsourcing things that take up
lots of my time, versus things that take up lots of my energy.
The third thing is focusing my time and energy on the revenue
generating things, the growth things, while the business is
you know, keeping the carwash running, whether it's setting up
and running my five day challenge or revamping and
training within the video pursuit society. Or more
recently, I created a brand new workshop on how to earn 1k a
month with YouTube, even if you're just getting started. And
I'll put a link to that below if you're interested in checking
it. And lastly, this is another thing that a lot of people don't
say or talk about in terms of context, actually, it's two
things. Number one, I have a supportive spouse, I recognize
that I have the privilege of having another income earning
adult in my house. And that has allowed me over time to focus on
success in my business, not just in terms of monetary success,
but also in terms of having the freedom and flexibility to do
all those school pickups and doctor's appointments and sports
practices, I have a really hard time believing that I wouldn't
be working 25 hours a week and making the ends meet. If I had
to be like the single sole breadwinner for my family, or
even just for myself, that's a lot of pressure. I'm not saying
it wouldn't have been possible. But that kind of relationship
and support is not necessarily something that everybody has.
And I recognize that having that, you know, support in place
is partly what helped me grow my business into what it is. And
the second thing is, what constitutes full time income for
me might be different for you. It took me a good long while to
get to the point where my take home pay for my business
exceeded my full time job income. And that's my take home
pay not my revenue. It wasn't fast. For me, I made a lot of
mistakes, I got a lot of gutter balls. But there were a ton of
mind shifts that had to take place along the way, in order
for me to keep going all of which brings me back to what I
said at the beginning of this video, which was that one of the
big keys to the whole five hour work day thing is the fact that
my YouTube channel, my blog, my business earns revenue, whether
I publish new content or not because creating content every
week does take time. But these more passive income streams are
all kind of coming from this same general sources of content
that I've created in the past up until now. So I'm able to focus
my time on growing all of that instead of doing one on one
client work. So if you want to learn more about the five
easiest YouTube revenue strategies and how to mix, match
and maximize your profits, and discover which of those
strategies are more lucrative for your niche or your business
idea, join me for the earn 1k a month with YouTube workshop.
I'll put a link down in the description