Linh Podetti: YouTube Strategy, Production and Outsourcing (#285)

Linh Podetti: YouTube Strategy, Production and Outsourcing with Linh Podetti and Fei Wu #youtube #linhpod – powered by Happy Scribe

I’m introducing you guys to her today. She’s based in Australia. So what time is it over there, Lynn?

09:00 a.m.. So it’s really comfortable for me. My day has just started.

Didn’t start at 03:00 a.m today.

Sorry. So my official work time has started. I actually still wake up at 03:00 A.m., my morning routine that really puts me in my peak.

Well, we have to talk about that. That is nuts. And I’m definitely a late sleeper, and that’s my rhythm. But with that said, Lynn, I just want to say that for people who are tuning in right now, I know for a lot of people in the US, or at least on the East Coast, are having dinner, so I really hope they will tune in later on. But if you’re watching this right now or later, please leave us a comment. Today we’re going to talk a lot about what it’s like to be a creator, a creative entrepreneur, and Lynn, just like myself, a YouTuber. But Lynn has many more businesses, in my opinion, than I do, so I’m going to leave this up to her. Lynn, if you don’t mind introducing yourself and all the businesses you’re running, that would be really helpful.

Yeah, I mean, I hope the audience really take advantage of the opportunity to ask us live questions. And I’m happy to answer anything here, but a little bit about myself is Vietnamese and my surname is Italian because I’m American Italian. But, yeah, I came from a very modest family, had to work really hard, and when I came to Australia, I have to even start solving and helping my parents. And I just really, really, like, didn’t have a good relationship with my family, which led me to becoming a single mum at the age of 20. And I’m going to make it really short. And that it made me realize I really need to have a better life and not let my parents be right, because they said, oh, my God, you’re a single mom, you’re going to quit school and you’re going to be useless. Right? And so I made sure that I had a kid. I didn’t make the right choice with the right guy, but I’m not going to fail again. And so that is why I’m so driven to really make a difference in my own life for my kids. One kid at the time.

Now I have two more kids. But then I guess that was the thing that pushed me over to really be successful in life. But then as I got into business, I became more like, oh, my God. Business can actually allow me to help more than just my family. I’m able to help people overseas, people from Australia, et cetera. And so currently, I run two businesses, which is Outsourcing Angel. It’s about hiring virtual assistants, outsourcing hiring people from developing countries, right. To do marketing work, etc. And then Dorm media production is a new business that is really about helping people get on videos like this. Ten years ago, I started getting onto YouTube and I had no idea what I was doing, but my husband found me on YouTube. But I always knew YouTube was powerful and I still up to now, been using video for my own business to generate leads. And then so now I’m just in that process. I’m like, how can I make it easier for people so that I have to go through the same journey as me?

Yeah, I have so many questions and I don’t know personally, but I have seen, as we talked about before, several of my friends who ended up being single parents, in this case, more women than men. And it is just astonishing how productive you’ve been and how you’re able to set up all these businesses. So we’re going to get right into it, really, and then maybe revisit some of the origin stories. But yeah, I’m so excited to talk to you because so much of what I’m doing right now mostly focused on YouTube strategy. I used to do production work for my clients. Frankly, that’s a lot of work and I’m so glad you guys do that through Dawn Media Productions. And luckily for us, we’ve been in chats on WhatsApp, like daily and what people don’t know if they’re watching this is we found each other through subtle Asian YouTuber influencer group. On YouTube. You found me, reached out what is it? On Facebook. Facebook group. And you know, like because it’s not like I get so many pings constantly. But you get these emails, you get these messages and you never know where I mean, are these really legit relationships?

What people’s agendas are? Frankly, I just wanted to explore with you and I realized that you are very serious about business through our first phone call and then we continue that journey. And so I just think it’s something that I don’t take for granted because I love the fact that you respect my time and we’re really in this together. So let’s actually unveil, unpacked. People don’t even know what we’re talking about. Lynn, let’s talk about what we are working on. Maybe we don’t give away the client’s name and information, but so much of what we do for him is applicable and relevant to a lot of people who are potentially watching right now. Companies and individuals.

Yeah, sure. I mean, let me go back to why I reached out to you, is that when you’re on your own journey I’m on my YouTube journey for the last few years. I always look out for who else is doing what I’m doing that I can learn from. And then I saw that you were posting things on this group and for me, it’s never about like, what can I get from her? Or what should I learn? It’s really like making friends, just seeing that you’re a nice person and at that time, there was no agenda because I really think the first rule of thumb is, do you like this person? Will you get along as a friend? And when you get along, you can always figure out how you can work together. So I’m pretty sure we contacted like months and months ago, maybe even last year, I can’t remember what it was, but we didn’t really do anything until we really allowed that relationship kind of simmer and build. And then eventually we reached out, we talked again, we even had a zoom chat, and then we kind of just really didn’t push that relationship.

But then what it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. And this is why we’re here. And we’re here because we thought we got to know each other’s strengths. And your strength is in strategy. So although I like YouTube in what the results it can bring, I find it really challenging with the strategy. And well, you know, sometimes, you know, you’re not as strong in analytics and you have to do it. You have to but feel good at. And what I love about in business is it’s almost like a playground where you can find friends who have the strength that you don’t have and how can you work together so that you can produce the best outcome for your clients. At the end of the day, we’re in business to serve clients, and I was like, okay, well, I love the production side. I love hiring people and building teams to actually do the production. But without the right strategy, without someone so smart like yourself, I won’t be able to create the ultimate solution for someone like a business owner who wants to crank this lead generation kind of strategy on YouTube. So, yeah, this is why we’re here.

Yeah, this is great. We’re going to dive in. And by the way, if you guys are watching, no matter where you are, drop us a note, tell us where you are and send us questions. We really love that. And so with that said, before we get into strategy, production and outsourcing, which is a lot of things you need, you basically need a team, a small or big team, but you need a lot of capabilities, you need a lot of skills, as Lynn just said. So I’m going to just pop the first question here on the screen, so I guess either one of us can answer. We’ll start with Lynn. Did you always use virtual assistants to help you edit and upload your YouTube videos? How do you know where to start?

Yeah, well, I live and breathe virtual assistants. When I found virtual assistants over ten years ago, I’m like, oh my God, it’s so amazing because you can find so many talented people out there at a very affordable cost. But of course, it really is a challenge in being able to find the right person. I made so many mistakes hiring the wrong people believing in that they can do the work, but they can’t, or going for the cheapest person and you end up wasting a lot more time and money than you originally tried to start out with outsourcing or hiring VA’s. But of course, over the years I’ve learnt now to how to actually work with them effectively. And so where you start is. Yes. You can either learn how to outsource and even I have a program called Outsource Master that people can learn how to outsource or they can even go to Outsourcing Angel in my business. Where they can go and get us to go and hire the VA to go and do a particular task for them on YouTube. Whether it’s editing jobs or it’s just uploading and publishing. But the reason why we end up creating Doormmedia Productions and collaborating with yourself for our YouTube packages is that we realize it’s really a bundle of things.

There’s a strategy, the consultation, it’s a team of VA, not hiring one VA. It’s actually going to the editor, the designer for the thumbnail. It’s all that unless you have the money to hire all these different people, you probably just need a percentage of the time of each of these person, these people. That is why we kind of created a service that is a bit of a lady but still being managed by a project manager like ourselves, who are Australian, US based, etcetera. Who are obviously we know what we’re doing and with quality check, etcetera. Versus you working directly with the contractor and then at the end working with an agency, it’s all about the results. It’s not really about just trying to manage the team directly.

Absolutely. I will add my question, my answer as well. But while I do that, then you might want to think about maybe there’s a price range that people can explore versus oh, you’re better off doing this on your own versus outsourcing and getting help. So the way that I’ve done my podcast, my YouTube channel, my podcast originally 2014, I’m someone who’s very DIY. It’s a double edged sword sometimes, right? So I like to learn the basics of things. I really need to know where I really want to learn. And then very quickly, within six months to a year, I probably should have done this sooner. Then I hire out and I hire people way more smarter, better at this particular editing production work than I am. And I learned from them. So that’s what I did. And luckily for me, my producer Herman from my podcast continue on to help me with my documentary and then later on for my YouTube channel.

But we decided that we both wanted.

To learn how to edit, so he and I split the work 50 50. But he does a much better job for sure. So that’s kind of where I come from. So back to you, Lynn. Like, if people are thinking about this. I know that personally. I developed this enormous amount of trust and appreciation for Herman, and that is unusual. I consider he’s one of my best friends. So for most people, what would be the budget that are looking out for you to say, you better go somewhere else where, hey, maybe this is a good opportunity to work with outsourcing angels.

Yeah. So when it comes to VA, if you try to recruit yourself and hire people and depending on the skill set, if you’re wanting a really advanced video editor that kind of is experienced and skilled and ready to go, it might be in the 20, $30 mark. If you are willing to kind of hire an editor that is fresh out of college and still Newman said, hey, I can edit. Sure, you can probably find them for $5. So the range is just so different. And then that editor, you can’t have them send their posting and publishing. So you might need another VA that involves an admin BA. And once again, the caliber of skill set and experience will dictate how much it is. If you hire someone locally, they’re going to be more expensive for the living, standards higher. But if you hire someone from the Philippines, like what we do, they’re more cost effective. But it really comes down to the number of hours that you’re going to hire with them that will make it cheaper than if you hire them longer term, 40 hours versus shorter term, it will be different rates as well.

So really varies then. When it comes to hiring an agency, you’ve got to see that it’s really about the results, the value of the project, manager, quality assurance, almost like putting this cooked. It’s like instead of cooking for yourself, buying the ingredients to get together, you are going to a great restaurant that the chef has already paid everything in the food. All you do is eat amazing food. That’s what you’re going to get out of domestic production. If you are a business owner that really is just too busy to really need to learn how it all works and really just want a peace of mind that the result just happens. Then.

You know.

I would recommend going to Dormer Productions because the other part that I’ve kind of innovated is that even when it comes to shooting the actual content. So apart from the editing. Publishing all that. We know what YouTube is all about. But even the shooting of the content can be very challenging. So for years, I don’t know about you, but I’m like, okay, what am I going to say? And then you kind of stop, start. And it takes years to actually be able to just talk to the camera. Right? And how do I shortcut that process for business owners out there? Because they’ve got their knowledge, they’ve got their expertise. But yeah, when it comes to video, it’s just a different art. It’s like you have to really learnt that, master that up. And then so what we do at Dawn Media as well as part of the package is I would actually facilitate an interview like this and ask questions so you feel like you’re talking to a friend, so it’s conversational. But then with knowing what YouTube video content is like, we would edit and cut in a way that when you watch it, it actually sounds like you are just walking straight to the camera.

So that is why you would then have to not even worry about what topics to say, how to say it, and just get it all done. And then we edit and we make it all look fancier that you’re ready to go. And then working with yourself in that equation means you’ve got the right strategy, you’ve got all the keyword research, the title, you don’t have to think about anything really, apart from once you’ve got all that asset, you just have to publish and promote and do whatever else you need to do on social media.

Yeah, absolutely. And what, Lynn, would you say that, you know, in terms of budget, like people can contact you to find out more or would you say that it’s below a certain budget? Maybe they’re not a good fit, not the right fit for Outsourcing Angels. We’re Dumb productions right now. Yeah.

So, I mean, if you’re hiring a team member, whether it’s Outsourcing Angel, you’re still looking at about one to $2,000 for someone a lot cheaper than overseas people. And once again, I said, depending on the exact skill and time, whatever. But at dawn as well, if you’re wanting to just get your YouTube done, it’s also around the one to $2,000 mark, depending on whether or videos and how much consult you do. But we really package it in a way that it is about one to two grand that you’ve got these videos that are going to come out looking amazing and you don’t have to worry about the YouTube. But, yeah, this is really for businesses as well, not just like content creators that want to do some fancy cooking shows and blogs because we really we bring in our entrepreneur experience and go, okay, how do you actually use videos to convert to leads and then those leads become clients, right? We don’t want to just be we had a client the other day together and he was such a perfect client because he came and said, we asked him together, what is your goal?

And he’s like, I don’t care about being famous. I don’t care about, you know, too much about the number of views and subscribers, I care about the number of leads. And we’re like, true. What about quality of leads? And like I said, ten years ago, I published like a couple of videos and this is prior to any of you at YouTube, and yet my husband found me on YouTube randomly google searching or YouTube searching something and he came across my video and then invited me for a business meeting. And then we became lovers and got married in eight months. So that is why I’m saying there’s quality, not the quantity. And also it’s not even about clients because he was my husband. And then I remember some other YouTube success. There was another guy for a charity to support and he’s just like he didn’t want to really donate to the big organization that was going to just take most of the money and absorb it to the admin team. So he was really looking for something authentic. And then he came across my video and he looked at the Philippine charity that we were doing and he contacted me and then he became a donor to our charity.

He even said he helped me arrange to go to the Philippines because I physically want to do charity work. And we’re like sure. And then he flew there the week after. This is just from finding me on YouTube and then I really want to visit you lead. And I’m like, Shaw, he came to Sydney and then we met up. And that’s all from YouTube?

Yeah, YouTube is very powerful. The content you put out there is evergreen. I don’t know how long. I mean, Lynn, did you ever ask her husband which video he actually watched before he proposed or reach out to you first?

I had a couple, so I know exactly what it was. And it was so tacky that I’m like, how can you see any quality out of that? But it’s just beauty and values in the eyes of the beholder, I guess. And I wish I put more effort in YouTube from that day, but I kind of just went on and did my own business. But I came back to YouTube a few times and that’s why I know that it is a challenging path unless you’ve got the right mentor to keep you on the right path and guide you to do the right thing as well. So for you, Faith, what are some of your successes on YouTube? Because I know you got sponsorship deals and collabs and stuff that I haven’t actually explored yet, but yeah, what would.

Your successes yeah, I would say brand deals is a huge deal. It’s also a very popular keyword right now. Creators are trying to address. And to my surprise, I mean, I’ve always been a very proactive person. I think a lot of that was as a result of being a podcaster earlier on. So a lot of people who never heard of the show, I had to proactively reach out to them. It can be a little embarrassing, little nerve wracking at times, but in retrospect, it was like, who cares? What’s the worst that could happen? They don’t respond or they say no, which means not right now. So when I started my YouTube channel in September, 2019 trying to take it seriously. I was ready. I was ready to reach out to brands, but I didn’t do it right away like that minute or that first week, that first month. I just want to make sure I was getting more comfortable. Surprisingly, I got to that point sooner than I thought. I think some of that has to do with the documentary that same year, the year before, I had this urge of like, I’m going to be in front of the camera.

I’m going to overcome my own fear selfdoubt as a result. Frankly, what I realized was that you could be a tiny or micro influencer on YouTube or even elsewhere on Instagram. But we’re focused on YouTube here that you can reach out to brands. One of the students who took my basically purchased my toolkit has just like me, a little over 100 subscribers. And he was able to he runs Coffee by Charlie. I believe. And he proactively reached out to coffee companies will be able to basically review their coffee machines. Mugs and different products for me. Brands reach out to me at first and we can get into pricing too. Which I think will be really that’s an area a lot of creators don’t know how to price themselves and where to go with that. But yeah, if you’re open to Ellen, I’m happy to dive right in. But before I do that, I also want to mention to people who are thinking about strategies right now. As part of our collaboration, you get something called a channel Playbook, which literally means like, we help you brainstorm the first 1216 videos for three months, or you can focus on the first one month and Pivot as needed.

We help you with title topics, keywords, so things that you don’t have to think about. Now, a lot of people we end up working with are most likely entrepreneurs, experienced entrepreneurs, so they do come in prepared, knowing what they’re experts in. So there are certain things they want to cover, that’s okay too, but we help them choose the right topics and titles. You don’t want to talk as if you’re giving a keynote speech or even your company, like All Hands meetings. YouTube has a very specific way of wording the question, the search terms. So we help you do all of that. So there’s a question, next question here from Marilyn Wu Yay with the same last name spelled differently. So Marilyn has a question. If I’m super busy, still wants to start and grow a YouTube channel, can I just rely on YouTube organic marketing or do I have to do more marketing outside of YouTube? Such a great question. Thank you. Thank you, marilyn, who wants to lend you a second?

I think you are a lot of steps ahead of me. You as a content creator, you started the YouTube channel two years ago and your success has gone off way faster than me. And I know that also because you’ve actually were already a content creator in podcasts and other places, right? And so I’d love to hear from you rather than me because I’m still learning from you.

Oh, thank you. You’re very humble, Lynn, but your videos are also very consistent. Your video is not like 100,000 views one video and then 20 views the other. So for me to take a stab at this, Marilyn, it’s true. So, number one, you’re thinking like people always ask me the question, should I post it on my personal Facebook page, Instagram? It’s really embarrassing. I don’t know if my videos are right for family and friends. My answer is yes, you should post. You’ll be surprised how many people want to join in and support you, how many of them actually want to find out what you’re doing. So I’ll be interested in knowing. Marilyn, if you have a moment, just let me know what your channel is about, some of the topics you’re planning on. So while you’re thinking about those questions, it is true that there are a lot of groups that can be very powerful, such as the example that Lynn and I mentioned at the beginning, even though subtle Asian YouTubers and influencers on YouTube on Facebook isn’t focused on a particular subject. With that said, we all have this shared passion, being creators, so you can actually share your work.

Not only that can help you, some of them might actually engage with your videos too. Now, beyond that, for instance, I did something I’m really proud of, which is I focused in some of my videos on tech tutorials and really quickly when I was in corporate America, working in corporate for over a decade. I love setting up my learning sessions. Like, meaning either I present something or I invite people from all sorts of departments and present something like people didn’t really know why I was so passionate about it, but I love teaching and learning. So I bring that personality, that genre into my YouTube videos and I do these, like, slow down videos. I sound hyper, but I’m actually a lot slower in explaining certain things. So then I build a crowd around how to use Zoom for specific things, audio, things like that, that zoom isn’t quite designed for. So organically people are searching for these things. So when you plan for your YouTube videos, I know that we have the tendency to want to do what we love, and I really respect that. But you also want to balance that with proper research.

Lynn. And I love using TubeBuddy. We both have the Legend account. Actually, if you’re asking questions today, I’m going to give away one Legend account from TubeBuddy for your participation. So Lynn and I will decide that after the show. So, yeah, we always do research before we hit record. We involve in these groups on Facebook. Maybe for you it’s LinkedIn depending on what the topics are. So, yeah.

So when I did YouTube, I kind of didn’t do a lot of promotion. I’ve never emailed to my email database of my YouTube videos that I’m releasing because I’ve almost dial on YouTube. And the videos that took off really just took off organically. And what I learned now is with analytics and YouTube is just so complex in its analytics, it shows you every data from which video they clicked on, which one subscribed, which one, how long did they watch for, etc. It’s just very comprehensive. And now after creating content, seriously for the last two years, I am able to look back and go, which videos did well? And it was a single mum. It was about outsourcing. And you get to see which other videos that suggested my videos on top. And this is where the strategy comes in place. It’s like, okay, now should I do more videos around this topic that everyone’s searching for? Or as you were teaching me, too, you were like, okay, instead of just how to start an online business, it’s like how to start an online business for single mums. And if you niche down further and deep dive, there’s just so much you can kind of take advantage of.

And the other technique that I like from you as well is that some of the videos that you’ve done well, why don’t you even rename the title to like, let’s just say, you know, how to Start a business back then, how to start an outsourcing business. And now I can actually even edit the title to how to Start an Outsourcing Business in 2021, reading that one, or even edit that title. So there’s just so much little hacks that we can do to actually it’s almost treated like Google ranking. It’s like, how do you actually rank higher on YouTube? And it’s really all about knowing the algorithm and the SEO, and so that you’re not actually dependent on the promotion outside. Now, some videos that I’ve collaborated with, someone quite famous, when he sends it to people or publish, tells people, yes, it racks up the view so much faster. You don’t have to wait for weeks and months to rack up your views. So the more promotion you can do, the better. But without it in itself is an engine that is going to drive the traffic. And that is why I love you too.

And I’m like, oh my God, now I finally get it and I want it more for everyone.

Yeah. The collaboration is a huge piece. We have so many questions today. I absolutely love this crowd still so kind of late. At the end of the day, for most people, collaboration is a huge piece. I learned that early on as a podcaster. Now it’s not just you promoting your monologue, it’s together, you and another person. So it’s true. So some people have bigger platforms, bigger following, but don’t underestimate the power of individuals. Who are willing to do whatever it takes. Because we interview sometimes like really, really big names and such, they most likely won’t share their platform with you and they won’t proactively promote your content. But in general, collaborations especially influencer similar in size or offer someone this platform, meaning YouTube, or maybe for you it’s a podcast. Then those people want to hop on because it will take them so much more work to create a podcast from scratch.

Right?

That’s the same thing. Kind of going back to sponsorships and brand deals. A lot of bands will love to work with YouTubers because it will take them so much effort and time and expertise. They don’t have to create a single video and they can basically outsource that to you as a creator that have.

An audience and then they can just get us to review back to that point about podcast because you’ve worked podcast for a long time. Where I was a podcaster for like a year and I was like. I don’t know if this is actually as good as YouTube. And so I was quickly to go, you know what, I want to focus more on the video format. Are you able to share, I guess, your viewpoint on the advantage of why you think YouTube is better or podcasts, et cetera?

Sure, absolutely. We talked about this before, Lynn. I think it’s so important to reemphasize. I started podcasts because I had this fear of showing my face and producing videos. And so that was a warm up for me. I love podcasts to get me wrong, but with YouTube videos it’s all of a sudden a visceral connection. So voice can be very powerful. Very, very powerful. Think about the last time you took a long walk. You’re commuting, you’re hearing people’s voices, even if you’re not interpreting it as something super special. But later on you actually recognize voices, right? Same thing. I know you have kids, Lynn, but when you watch a Hollywood, a big hit from Pixar or something, you recognize all these famous actors, actresses, voices, well, they’re just like cartoon characters on the screen. You have that connection. So YouTube, as a result, it’s crazy for me, frankly. Three months ago I got hired to moderate the entire Women’s Association, women’s Leaders Association and HR Summit has over 50 attendees, all very famous people, CEO of Whole Foods and so the cofounder of Apple, Steve Wozniak. And the person, I couldn’t believe it, he trusted me.

And I was thinking, man, what if I’m like crazy or something? And he’s like, yup, how much do you charge? That’s good, we’ll pay you that rate. Are you available? Done.

He found you on YouTube, that’s it? Yup.

He left me a message with his phone number and I went back to delete it. That’s something that I try to make sure my channel is clean, that people in a way are not going to be. You never know who’s going to be calling that number later on. So, yeah, it is incredible, guys. I think for podcasts too, I build my business so there’s no regret at all. I think Facebook really was started because of the podcast, but then later on it really accelerated for me to be able to focus on so much of content creation as opposed to having to work for other clients. Now, with full transparency, my YouTube revenue with about half now, I would say about one third of my total revenue. So that is huge for me.

Yeah, I love to add to the power of YouTube. What I’ve noticed is, apart from the trust factor, like even my husband, he apparently said, I want to marry her before he even met me. But because he saw the video, it was enough to kind of know that person. But the second part is I find that with YouTube it’s evergreen. Like people are finding my videos back in 20 19, 20 18, whatever it is, because of just keyword research. Now you can’t do that with LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. There isn’t a way for people to go, I’m looking for outsourcing, something something, and then a video exactly what they want. So YouTube itself is such a great search engine and the videos become your assets. It’s almost like you have all these little websites everywhere and it just keeps coming up. And that’s how people find you versus podcasts. I think you have to go for the category. Look for a podcast channel that you might like, listen in and hope that the other episodes are good. Right? It kind of doesn’t suggest the next videos, etc.

Yes, exactly. And I want to use Lynn’s real quick before I get to Yardi’s party. Question. Thank you for submitting a great question. But I also want to mention for people with services and even products, I launched a digital product, literally zoom timers. Really easy to create virtual backgrounds, right? Most people have used that and I noticed that’s a niche and I just kind of offered my solution. I talk through why I think it’s important how I create them and you can download them for $2 apiece. And, you know, I launched this product a year ago and it’s still generating rather significant revenue for me. And just from those two videos, the second video was just an add on. Oh, they’re new colors for this zoom timer. It was amazing. So if you have services like Lynn, as she mentioned, it’s a few thousand, one, two, $3,000.01 conversion means that much money for her and that’s what those videos can generate. And so I think, especially if you have a product or you are a product company, you can launch so much of that. It’s not just when the product is done super slick and you can talk about the entire creation process, you can talk about your own failures, you can talk about your inspirations and all that jazz.

So let us pop up the yardie’s party question. Great to be here. How do you juggle the demands of a growing general business and family obligations? That’s definitely a lame question. I’ll try to do my best.

Yeah, I mean, you really need a team. And this is why. If you’re a business owner and you want to just get cracking on YouTube without adding extra time, then pay for a team like the Media Production Team and Faith is that we’ll actually just do it all. And all you have to do is kind of turn up to chatting with us and then we give you the playbook and then we kind of facilitate interview and then you don’t have to touch the editing at all, right? So you want to do as little as possible, then all you need to do is pay for the right solution. Now, if you have a bit more time and you think that you want to liaison with the team and build up your VA’s, etc, then that will just take a bit more time, right? And so really it’s about having the right time, right, team and then managing your time. For me, if you want to check out my how to Wake Up at 03:00, a.m. Video, I can share with you how I’ve been able to optimize my day by changing my sleep schedule. I sleep at nine, wake up at three, and I really only need six solid hours of sleep.

And I wake up and I just have so much more time to plan my day. And especially if you have a family, you have kids, you really need to be strategic about your time. Everything is about being strategic, not just wanting to do all these things, but then just hope for the best. It’s like, okay, I want to dedicate to this project or build a new business or be there for my family, look at your whole week and go, how am I going to do this within the day, my day, I still manage to exercise meditate, journal because I consciously decide to do that first thing in the morning, dedicate that time, wake up that time. And even if I’m in the middle of watching a really amazing show, I’m like sleep time. You have to be disciplined. And then when people say, oh, but I can’t sleep earlier as you, that’s just because you don’t want to. If you really wanted to, you go, book, go to sleep. Right? And then when the alarm goes on, I leave the alarm outside to make sure that I have less chance of snoozing and waking up.

So I’m human like everyone else. But at the end of the day, I’m just sharing you some tips on how to hack that procrastination. We all can easily default to like, it’s too hard to juggle all this, but I have a family or I have young kids and there’s a lot of excuses that we tell ourselves. And by myself is just look at Elon Musk or some people that are trying to take us to another planet, and you go look at their goals, and yet they’re a human being, the two arms, two legs, and they can do it. Our little thing that we try to do is not that big at all, not that scary compared to them. So that the way I motivate myself.

Yeah, great response. I want to add to that, I don’t have children. I am my mom’s caregiver. She’s in good health right now. But over the years, my dad passed away and she had her medical conditions. So I feel like I’m always going to be ready. And a lot of my life in the past year or so was about to bring her to different appointments. And frankly, I’m really grateful I’m able to do that and be there inside the room with her because of being in a creative entrepreneur. Now, speaking of which, I would say that all of us, without exceptions, everybody in the chat right now, Lynn and myself, we can absolutely outsource more. Sometimes I slap myself on the hand to say I should do this more. What I do is I actually sit down. Sometimes you can analog style, write things down on a piece of paper. Sometimes I use notes to say, what are some of the things I absolutely have to do? So let’s face it, I’m going to go live right now. I have to be there. I have to be here. I can’t just pull my mom in to say, well, good luck.

You’re talking to Lynn tonight. So I have to do that. Creating strategy decks. Well, that’s debatable, but I actually I want to be responsible for the strategies I’m putting forward. So I’m doing that. You know, Lynn’s helping with production, with other VA type of work. You know, again, you’ve got to reevaluate from me outsourcing content, giving work to my team. By the way, just three people. Herman, who’s that in that painting right now? And amazing, right? And then I have one content manager, Anna. I have one virtual assistant, Rose. That’s my small three person team, including me with four people. Now, here’s the trick. You observe yourself if you repeat any tasks more than once, right? You’re doing something more than once, I pinch myself and say it’s time to give it to somebody else. I don’t want to do anything of the same thing more than once. So blog post, updates, revisions, updating this blog post for a live stream. I give it to Rose. She knows exactly what to do. Why? Because I record videos for her. So I use Loom to record these videos so they understand exactly what my expectations are.

But I also want to add that I trust my VA and content managers so much. I don’t mind if they make mistakes. I love when they give me ideas beyond my capacity of thinking. I love when I learn from them. I love when they teach. Right. Last thing I’m really passionate about zapier. Any task. Automations.

Yes, we love it too. And I’ll talk to angel, we have this ops manager. He was actually a management consultant like yourself, I think you were back then, a consultant. I think you all think alike. And he just automated the shit out of our business.

Yeah, exactly. So, for instance, I caught myself two days ago of running these Zoom events for my clients. I actually did one right before this meeting today. And of course I wasn’t overthinking it. It’s kind of a new thing to us. And so I set up Eventbrite and plug Zoom in so this way they get reminders. It looks nicer, better. But then we always see new people, like people we never interacted with for our business. And that’s a fantastic thing by the way. You want new people to be exposed to your services and offerings. So their emails are just sitting in eventbrite. And I used to I caught myself exporting from Eventbrite, importing it into MailChimp where my client uses for email marketing. I immediately stopped myself. I said, this is a perfect Zapier task and it’s so easy to do, so easy.

Now it goes straight from one system to the other without having to manually export. Okay. Because sometimes you’re so in it that you’re not even auditing yourself. Assessing. That’s why I’m always telling clients it’s not about hiring a VA and can’t just sit there and repeat on a cycle. Really always looking at your task again. Okay, now that they’ve taken off all of that work from me, what else? And then you’re starting to do and then you go, okay, what else can I offload? And then you kind of upgrade that person to take over that task and then get that person and assistant and always remind yourself that it’s not an expense. When you hire team is because you want to free yourself up so that you could spend your time not watching more Netflix or do whatever to actually spend more time strategizing or contacting leads and really doing high impact work. But if you don’t have the time, you can’t do that. And so then really if you want to grow your business or you want that freedom lifestyle, you’re going to have to be brave and be courageous to build a team.

And the other I wrote the other day was also the importance of not throwing away your team easily just because you can. So in the VA, people know it’s like a freelancer contractor. So I love it because I can hire them and can let them go whenever I want to. But they forget that they don’t get to reap the benefit of the loyal committee that I have that are with me for seven to ten years. Can you imagine like they know me inside out there. They care about me. I know that they’ve got my back. And no matter how challenging business gets or we pivot to a new way, they’re like, I’m here for you. But entrepreneurs, they get scared. You know, as soon as business gets a bit hard, it’s like I’m getting rid of all my expenses and you get rid of they’re not expensive people. Their investment that you’ve trained and you nurtured and relationship, it takes time to build and it’s just you don’t want to waste that away by just reacting to entrepreneur challenges.

Yeah, I seriously cannot believe how in sync and how much longer we can talk about this. Probably could be hours and days. I do want to point out the fact that the reason why we’re able to talk, I mean, this feels like almost our first conversation, we just lean right in is for people who are watching if whether you’re watching it now or later and you have these doubts that you’re open to share about them and thinking like, how do I do this? Or I’m really stuck on this thing, I’m unable to spend time with my family. Am I doing too much myself? The answer is probably yes. But also, especially during the pandemic and it’s very revealing. A lot of my friends started their businesses for the first time, which I love. Many of them are stuck. Some were stuck and decided to go back to a full time. Some are feeling incredibly stuck where they feel like their business is spinning. They don’t know what to do. So if you are in this position right now, take a moment and talk to people who have done it differently and who are able to pull themselves out of the ditches and able to really live the freedom.

Reach out to Lynn email lynn email myself. Leave a comment below. But also in your direct network, look for those people. And I want to just give you an idea of basically caution you to not immediately go to people who simply have gone to really good schools, okay. Or have done really well in the corporate world. Because I gotta tell you this, surviving as an entrepreneur has very little to do with like, I don’t know, IQ point where your diploma or how rank you were in corporate world, because it’s almost the opposite. I came from business consulting, marketing. There are like dozens of people in every department, so I didn’t have to do much. But now as an entrepreneur, you’ve got to do everything. And it’s so thrilling and it is so counterintuitive. Especially you started when you were 20 years old. Could you maybe talk to that a.

Little bit about having a baby at 20 or whatever?

Yeah, actually you’re 20 years old. You were very limited in terms of resources and most likely financial means as well. And you are now responsible for another human being. And you have to juggle a lot of things. So in other words, you have to be more nimble than probably most of us could even imagine.

So, yeah.

How do you roll up your sleeves, find, I don’t know, shortcuts advice or.

Realize, as humans are so capable, but we just don’t know how far we can go until we have to go far. Right? And so for me, I work really early on when I had no family support and I had to raise this kid that I made. Now I can’t put him away somewhere. It’s one of those things where I’m like, you’re having a baby. You know, this baby is yours forever. And I kind of didn’t even get that point. I was like, oh, yeah, I can do it. But it taught me really early on that you can make things happen. It’s scary, it’s daunting, but it’s possible you’re able to juggle things. I still managed to find time to go out, party with my friends and still find time to go to uni, still find time to do everything. So, yeah, you’d be amazed at how much you can actually achieve, but it’s just really about willing to push yourself, willing to go for that goal. And I think back as an entrepreneur realign your mission. For me, when I wake up every day, I don’t just see money, and I’m like, oh, my God, I just want to live in this luxury house and whatever.

I’m really thinking bigger about how do I help more businesses to not struggle the way I struggled, or I know, lead generation. And YouTube is so amazing, and how do I shortcut that for people? And because if they can do that, then they won’t fail in their business. And then I even started Outsource Masters, which is a mentoring program to teach people how to even start their own VA agency, how to start the outsourcing company. Now, why am I doing that? It’s because my mission is bigger than just making money. My mission is, how do I help more people to have jobs if there’s only one of me that is trying to create jobs for people in the Philippines, well, how do I help people in Africa? How do I help other people? So I realized I only have a limited time in this world, so maybe I could just share all my knowledge and share expertise that I have so that more people go out there and build a business like I did and then help more people. And so when your vision is big like that, it really inspires you. It pushes you through challenges, and you kind of, I don’t know, find that strength that you never knew you had.

Beautifully said. And I noticed today, for instance, people are watching us, and we’re in front of a lot of Asian creators. And I just want to say that, yes, there is one way to have, like, an Asian women only podcast, and I really admire that. But there’s also another way of just putting yourself in front of the camera. And chances are there may be other people looking at you and thinking, I don’t think my parents have taught me to necessarily do this. Or even nobody in my family or friends network think this is a good idea. In fact, this is really silly. Whatever it may be, when you start doing something, you become a new representation of yourself and you connect with a new world, a world that didn’t exist. It’s not like, oh, somewhat overlapping, or people can all of a sudden turn to you, actually by being brave and courageous. The pain point is I actually turn some people away. And so put yourself out there. And here’s the good news. You’re probably thinking, you guys have a few thousand or, I don’t know, 10,000 subscribers. How many people are coming after you, giving you negative comments?

I frankly haven’t seen that much at all. And when I do, I separate myself from maybe this is not a good piece of content. How can I improve it? Or is this just something that people just rather maybe just trolling me for? Whatever. Maybe then I’d ignore them. But what about you, Lynn?

Like, have you seen no, I haven’t had any troubles. And you made a really good point in that I was actually a shy kid. So what you see right now is not who I thought I was back then. So one thing I always tell people, if you don’t think that you know yourself that well because you don’t. And until you learn a new skill, learn a new given. Like YouTube when you first look at you’re, like, what the hell is YouTube? Until you get into it now you can really understand it and talk about it, right? Or video. I remember how scared I was. I don’t know how to talk, and I’m so awkward. And you can still find me on YouTube if you search my old name, Lin Huang, my father. I love video. Like, I even wanted to become an actor. Now I want to be helping and even interviewing people. It was because I created the podcast last year, and I’m like, I really love interviewing people that you might end up liking something that’s completely out of your character.

Yeah, I love that. That’s definitely right there. That’s a segment I want to take out and quote and use YouTube shorts and things that are happening right now. Guys, there’s one takeaway from this, is you’ve got to put yourself out there. And the good news is there are systems that are in place for the budget. That certain type of budget, you might be able to get some additional help. And I think, again, lens businesses in terms of what they offer, I think is really reasonable. And if you don’t have that, you can try to assemble your own team from upwork, upwork.com. I found a lot of resources from there and go in with an open heart and know that you’ve got to have some missteps, and that’s completely normal. You’re allowed to change your mind. As I tell people, the cover art on your YouTube channel, your podcast cover art, the topics, the niches, those can change. You’re going to learn to forgive yourself and give yourself, like, hold some space for yourself. Hold space. Not just hold space for other people, which is a great thing to do, but give yourself a chance to explore something different, something new.

And this has been so great, guys. And Lynn, is there anything that you want to talk about we haven’t covered?

No, I think we covered well enough. We’ll let people go back to their workday and be productive. Right.

Because, like I said, we have so.

Much to share and we come from a really great places. We’ve been there, done that, and we just hope that people really take our word seriously and that we want to shortcut your success journey and we want you to get there and achieve all your dreams.

Yeah, it’s possible. If Lynn and I can do it, you guys can definitely do that, too. So thank you so much for joining us. I included a lot of links in the description below, wherever you’re watching this YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook page. So connect with Lynn, reach out, ask us any questions in the comments. We’ll pay attention to all of that. Lynn has a very robust team. Again, you know the VA and content managers as well. Yeah. We want to make the most out of the time you committed.

Thank you.