I make money as a birth worker from my Instagram account. And I can't tell you exactly what percentage but I would be willing to bet that 90% of the money that I've made in my business, since it started has come directly from people that found me on Instagram. Yes, I'm talking about in person, doula clients, but I'm also including sales of my online birth courses and my live workshops that I do on Zoom. So I don't know if I've mentioned this recently, but I have two Instagram accounts. One of them is called Birth worker podcast at birth worker podcast. And that's where I post all about this podcast, I post about things geared towards birth workers and doulas. But I also have my original Instagram account, which is at the autonomy, Mommy. So my birth worker podcast account is now about a month old because this podcast is just over a month old. And I have 1000 followers over there. But the autonomy Mommy has been around for a couple years, and it's got 30,000 followers. And the reason that I wanted to mention this, is because when I say that I make money from Instagram, I just imagine that there are people out there and they look at oh my gosh, 30,000 30,000 followers, they see that I have 30,000 followers, and they're just like duck, Haley, of course you make money on Instagram, you have a ton of followers. But here's the thing, and this is what this episode is about. Today, we're talking all about how your follower account is in 100%. No way related to your monthly income. And I know it because I'm living it right now. And I'm telling you that my follower count is 100% in no way related to my monthly income. And I can tell you that because I have had $10,000 months with less than 10,000 followers, and I've had $10,000 months with over 20,000 followers. So listen to me when I say this follower count is not what is going to make you money. You're not going to make money from your follower account as a birth doula and right now we're not talking about like becoming an influencer, right? So we're not talking about like Tik Tok paying you out or Instagram paying out for making reels because then you are actually making money from your followers and from people who are consuming your content. But that's not what this is about. In terms of running a doula business, whether that's in person doula support, or even if you're a birth worker, and you're not a doula, maybe you do lactation consults, maybe you're a nurse and you have an online course for moms, whatever it is follower count, will not make you money. Okay. And that's what I want to get really clear in this episode, you will not make a ton of money as a birth worker online selling your online birth resources. Just because you have the followers, right, the followers does not equal the money. And if you have listened to this podcast before, then you know that I am a little bit more than obsessed with business strategy. So of course, today's episode is one of my favorite topics. It's essentially strategy. How do I make money from my Instagram? How do I make my first $10,000? Using my Instagram? How do I get to $10,000 recurring month using my Instagram? So that's what we're talking about today.

Hey there birth nerd you're listening to the birth worker podcast. My name is Kylie banks, and I am totally obsessed with birth, and equally obsessed with business. And this is the show where I help women turn their passion for birth into a sustainable, profitable and most importantly, impactful career. All right, let's get into it.

We are talking about how you do not need 10,000 followers on Instagram, you do not even need 5000 followers on Instagram, you do not even need 1000 followers on Instagram in order to start making money directly from your Instagram following. And I just want to be clear again that when I say make money from Instagram, I'm not talking about being an influencer. So I'm not talking about brand deals, or getting paid for making Instagram reels, which I have done. And I do we're not talking about that. We're talking about selling your doula services, selling your childbirth education selling your digital products, your online courses. How do we sell more of those things to our Instagram followers? I hope by now you understand that follower count doesn't matter. But when I say that, you might think well if follower count doesn't matter if engagement might not even matter. Well, what matters then. And so here's what matters most. What matters most is that you have a very clear journey that takes someone from a stranger on Instagram to a paid client

whatever that looks like, you know, paid client, is it a one on one coaching session? Is it a prenatal support call? Is it a mother circle? Is it a support group? Is it doula services? Is it an online course whatever that is, you need to make that journey. Very, very, very clear for you and for the people who are landing on your Instagram account. So I want to ask you, what's your content strategy? What is your content strategy? How are you getting people off of Instagram. And I'm not talking again, I'm not talking about like, putting a link in your bio to book a discovery call. And I see so many doulas doing this, where they don't have any other call to action in their social media except click on the link in my bio, or click on the link in my link tree and book a discovery call. That's all they have to sell their their offers, which for most doulas is just in person support. So I know most people listening to this, you're starting to get interested in those online offers and that more recurring revenue, so you don't have to be on call all the time. But I do have to remind you that the majority of doulas are only showing up in person, they do not have anything online any way to make money online. But what I wanted to say is that I see it all the time where doulas have that link in their bio to book a discovery call. And all the red flags are going off, because I'm like, wait a second, like that's not a nurture heavy customer journey. Like, where's your freebie? Where's your welcome sequence? Where's your blog or your podcast, and you know, about blogging and podcasting and creating a YouTube show, because we talked about that, I think it was episode, Episode Five, it's called five ways to attract the perfect doula clients. And so if you've been around the podcast for a while, then you already know the importance of getting people off of social media, right, getting people onto your email list, consuming your content, nurturing people before they pay you for a really expensive in most cases, high ticket service, that's not going to come from someone straight from Instagram, straight to booking a discovery call and your LinkedIn bio, no, there's got to be so many more touch points there, you have to offer more value there, you have to stand out more. Otherwise, you're just going to be one of those other million doulas on Instagram that don't actually have a true call to action or don't actually haven't actually thought out their customer journey. They're not nurturing people. And they're wondering why they aren't getting a lot of clicks to their website. They're wondering why they're not getting a lot of engagement on social media, right? They're wondering why they're not booking a lot of clients are closing a lot of consultations. And this is why this is why because they don't understand what really matters. It's because they think what matters is people like their posts on Instagram, people follow them on Instagram, oh my gosh, someone's gonna go to my, my page, and they're gonna see my Lincoln bio, and they're gonna click and they're gonna buy. And I'm sorry to tell you that that just doesn't happen in the majority of cases. And I don't want you to think that that's normal. I don't want you to think that just by throwing up a discovery calling in your Lincoln bio, that you're gonna have 2010 Five, or even one discovery calls booked every single month, right? So again, if follow a follower count doesn't matter what matters most having that very clear customer journey that takes someone from a stranger on Instagram, to a paid client. So what I actually wanted to walk you through today in this episode, is what I would do today, if I was starting from scratch, and I really wanted to make $10,000 per month using my Instagram following. So no awkward in person networking, no going into chiropractic offices, or obstetrician offices, which by the way, are fantastic ways to network, and you probably should absolutely be doing if you're up for it. But to be honest, I don't like doing those things. I don't like meeting a bunch of strangers. I like sitting on my couch with my two year old and growing my business from there. And the platform of choice for me is Instagram. So if I were to start today, starting over, I wanted to make $10,000 per month using my Instagram, here is what I would do, I would need three things. The very first thing that I would focus on is an audience. And you might be saying Wait, the first thing you need is an audience. But Kylie I thought you said like, audience doesn't matter like follower count doesn't matter. But here's the thing. When I say audience, I'm not stopping at Instagram. And more importantly, you need an email list. Okay, you need your audience on your email list. You need to get people off of Instagram and onto your email list. And with that comes a whole lot of things that you need, like landing pages and opt in pages and you actually need that freebie so people are going to even give you their email because people do not happily give out emails for nothing these days. And that's the first thing I would do. The first thing I would do is build that freebie.

I grow my audience grow my email list, and try and grow that as fast as I can. So I would make a freebie that over delivers value, big time, I would create a freebie that's almost viral. So maybe something that's a little bit divisive, maybe something that's really original, and maybe even something that as basic as you know, the questions to ask a provider, because I see that out there all the time, maybe something a little bit spicy, that's what I would do. And so the first thing I would do is build my audience outside of social media. The next thing I would do and the next thing you need, if you're doing this, is you need an offer. So what are you actually going to sell. And this is something that is easy to say, it's easy to think that we know exactly what we're gonna want to sell when we start off. But we aren't thinking about the big strategy. We're not thinking big picture when we're starting. And this is something that I'm just starting to see and help help students work through inside the birth worker Academy. But you need to think big picture and what I what I mean by that is, okay, let me take a step back.

There are a couple of different things that you can sell, as your offer as a birth worker, we could do in person services, we could do placenta encapsulation. You could do an ebook, you could do in person classes, you could do online workshops, digital courses, the option there are so many options, the options are endless, probably not endless, okay. But there are a lot of options. So here's the thing. You might say to yourself, you know, I don't want to build an online business, I'm just going to work in person. So how I'm just going to work in person attending births. So how do I get to $10,000 months? Well, I want you to like reverse engineer the math there and say, how many clients would you need if you wanted to make $10,000 a month, and the majority of people with their doula packages as they are today, they actually don't even have the capacity to serve that many people in person to make $10,000 per month, right? So you need to consider that you need to consider what offers lead to your income goals, with your time investment with a time that you're willing to put in. And so I have a lot of students that say then, okay, well, I'm going to create an ebook. And eBooks are awesome. My very first online product was a $27. ebook. It's now $37. It's called the third trimester checklist, it has sold to over 1000 people. It is amazing. It's amazing. But here's the thing, it's $27, how many would I have to sell every month, if I wanted to have $10,000, recurring every single month, I would need to sell a lot. Same with a workshop or workshop could be, I don't know, $25 to $100. And even then, even if it's $100, I would need to sell 100 every single month to hit my $10,000 goal. And so I need to ask myself, do I think I'm capable of that? Do I want to have a goal that high 100 workshops every month, or maybe do I want to create something more comprehensive, maybe I want to create something with a higher value, and also a higher price tag. Because you can think, let's say you're selling let's say you create an online childbirth education course really comprehensive, you have it's built like a program. So maybe you meet people on Zoom weekly, or you meet them every month really comprehensive program, let's say you're charging $500 for that. Now, all of a sudden, you actually don't need to sell that many. Now all of a sudden, you just need 20 students per month to hit your goal of $10,000 months. Right 20 is a lot easier, even if the price is higher 20 is a lot easier. 20 sales is going to be a lot easier for you than selling hundreds and hundreds of a $25 ebook.

So that is the second thing you need, you need an offer. And when you're thinking about what kind of offer you're creating, I just want you to zoom out a little bit and think about that strategy. So with my time that I want to invest and with how long it takes me to produce each of these things, or based on how many sales I think I can make per month, can I get to $10,000 with these offers? And when the answer is yes, when you've come up with an offer, and for most of us, it's going to look like a digital course or a longer program where we walk them through our framework, teaching them our specialty, whatever that is, you know, is it is it a homebirth course? Is it a VBAC course, is it a conscious conception program.

For the most part, if we want to be hitting $10,000 months, we need to be creating products like that more comprehensive, higher price, less students more value, and a whole ton of in

PACs because you are having a lot of touch points with your students. Imagine how how much easier it is to serve 20 students than it is to serve 1000 students. Imagine making $10,000. But you needed to sell to 1000 people. And then imagine making $10,000. And you only have 20 students imagine how much you can serve them more. And I learned this with creating the birth worker Academy, where it's $2,000 per person, and we had 150 students, and you can do the math there. But it was a lot easier to be easier to make that money selling a program that costs $2,000. Right? I don't want you to think that $10,000 months are easy to get to. It's simple, but it's not easy. And I don't want you to think that it's going to be easy to get there with a $20 product is what I'm saying. So now that you've worked on your audience, getting them off of Instagram onto your email list, and now that you have your offer, so what is it going to be a program a workshop and ebook, you know what I think the next thing you need is what we call a launch mechanism. And I don't know if you guys can hear it, but I live in South Florida and it just started downpouring. So I'm just going to apologize in advance if the sound quality is a little bit strange. Because here in my podcast studio, I actually have two really big windows, so not the best for a podcast producing. So again, I apologize if the sound quality is a little bit weird right now. So the third thing you need is a launch mechanism. And here's what I mean by that. How are people going to hear about this offer that you're creating this offer that you've put so much time and energy and love into, and that you've created specifically to hit your goal of $10,000 months, and just serve as many moms as you can to help them have amazing birth experiences, or conception or postpartum or whatever that is. So how are they hearing about your offer? Now I have to give you a hint, they are most likely not going to stumble upon it. They're most likely not going to find it through your Lincoln bio after just stumbling across your Instagram. They're not going to stumble upon it through a Google search most likely. Where are they going to find it? They're gonna find it through whatever you choose as your as your launch mechanism. And so there are a couple of different ways to sell online courses. The first way that you can sell it is email sequences. So can you create an email sequence for all of your email, email lists, and they go through this email sequence that tells them about your offer that launches your offer to them?

Can you do a flash sale. So you can have an excuse to talk about your offer all day every day for like five days straight on Instagram. Phenomenal. And again, send send every time you do any of these send emails to your entire list. And another launch mechanism you've probably heard about is five day challenges. I see those a lot. I see a lot of people hosting five day challenges. Also workshops, where you pay money to go to a low ticket workshop. And then at the workshop, you get to hear about this person's $500 birth course or $2,000 conscious conception program. And so that could also be a launch mechanism. But there is a holy grail, there is one that I think is better than all I have tried them all, seriously, all of them. And this is my favorite. My favorite is doing a webinar. Webinars are the holy grail of selling offers online. And we're gonna come back to webinars in a second. But I just wanted to kind of walk you through how I launched my birth course for the first time. So when I first launched my comprehensive childbirth, online education course, so not an ebook, not a workshop, like my big course. It's called autonomous birth Academy. It's $400. And when I created that course, that's when I had my first $10,000 month as a birth doula as a childbirth educator. So before I created autonomous birth Academy, again, it's $400. I did have an ebook. I did have workshops. I did bring in, you know, two to $5,000 per month selling those. But it wasn't until I created my comprehensive online course for $400. That's the first month that I had a $10,000 month. And that course was launched on I think June of last year so June 2021. And I'm I'm definitely not shy when it comes to numbers. I'm sure you guys have noticed that already. So I just wanted to

to kind of let you know where I'm at now. And so since June of 2021, since the month that I launched my online course, my average monthly revenue in my business

has been $16,000 per month. And back when I was only doing in person doula support, I would make two grand to five grand per month depending on how many clients I took on that month, I would say closer to two grand most months. And so what I did by creating this online birth course, I added an extra $10,000 every single month, on top of what I used to make

me creating my first online course led to financial freedom for me, my Instagram account led to financial freedom for me, and your Instagram account can start to lead to financial freedom for you too. But let me tell you, it was not my followers that led to these five figure consistent months, it was not the amount of followers that led to my success. No, no, no, it was the Instagram strategy, right? It was the the entire customer journey. It was getting people off of my Instagram and getting them onto my email list and understanding how to be a true digital marketer and promote my services and products to them. Because I know how good they are. So it feels good to me to promote them because I know how much they can change lives.

My Instagram account was a huge part of finding financial freedom.

I learned Instagram strategy, I learned how to grow my account, I learned how to get people from Instagram to my email list, I learned how to get people listening to my podcast, I learned how to create online offers. And in this case, I created a digital course. And I learned how to sell that digital course. And again, in this case, it was using a webinar. And that's why webinars are my favorite launch mechanism. They are the easiest, in my opinion to pull off. They have massive success. And I learned all of this from my very first mentor whose name is Amy Porterfield. And I took one of her courses one of her programs. It's called digital course Academy. And let me tell you, her process is straight magic. Now in the online business scene, Amy's kind of known for creating webinars that lead to 10s of millions of dollars in sales for her and her students. I am one of Amy's success stories. I went from not even having a business not knowing the first thing about running an online birth business to making a quarter million dollars. In less than two years, I have built this business from the ground up. And the only person I learned from in the beginning, the only person was Amy Porterfield, she taught me how to outline my course create my course name it, price it, sell it, launch it, make it better, launch it again and make it better launch it again. And autonomous birth Academy by itself has brought into my business over six figures. And it's been around for a little more than a year now.

Now, I wanted to take time to tell that story today. Because Amy, I love her dearly. She again, she's the one who got me from zero to 10k months within six months, which I'm not saying is normal. I will tell you right here right now, that was very abnormal, I have an abnormal level of

hustle and lack of sleep and obsession with business. So I will say it did happen pretty fast for me. But I think that you could make it happen for you to definitely by the end of 2023. And so I want you to look at your calendar. And I want you to sit down soon and start mapping out your goals for 2023. Because if you feel like it, I think you should consider adding creating a digital course to your goals for 2023. And I think you should put a big fat $10,000 at December 31 2023. And by then I want you to be making $10,000 per month from your online course.

Now next week, Amy is running a boot camp to teach you all of the foundational steps of creating online courses. This is a boot camp that I went through two years ago, just two years ago I was exactly where you are now. And look how far I've come and I can't wait to cheer you on all of the way because you are gonna get here too. You are. And so if you join the boot camp next week, it is $47 and I'm actually going to be there with you

So I'm creating a special little VIP bonus group for any of the birth workers who join through my link and the link is in the show notes. You can also find it on my Instagram, you could go to birth, worker.com/boot camp, all of those ways are going to make sure that they know that you are coming from me, which means I can get you set up in a private little VIP group. And we're gonna go through the bootcamp together and nail down all of the big first decisions to help you feel confident to put that $10,000 goal on your calendar for the end of next year. So if you have any more questions about the bootcamp, please reach out to me you know where to find me, Instagram at birth worker podcast, and I will see you right back here next week. Next week. We have an amazing episode. It's an interview with Dr. Nathan Riley, and the episode is called Moving beyond the medical paradigm. So we get to hear the story of how Dr. Nathan decided to leave his role at the hospital as an obstetrician and how he decided to actually serve mothers instead. And he will walk us through essentially that entire process for him next week right here on the birth worker podcast.