I worked for a viral Instagram Coach for 2 weeks. Here’s what I learned.
Last year I got an Instagram message from a viral IG coach I’d been following for a while. He had over 1.3M followers! The message said,
“Hey Sarah. I saw you applied to be a coach on my team. Are you still interested?”
I sat still, staring at my phone, wondering if this was for real or if it was somehow a scam. It definitely felt too good to be true!
I proceeded with caution.
We scheduled a Zoom call, and sure enough, there he was, Insta Coach Mike.
Mike is honestly pretty impressive. He grew a viral account in his native language of Russian, then in Spanish, and then in English.
Can you imagine posting consistent content and building a business in your third language?! And he’s younger than me.
After the Zoom call, he invited me to be part of his team. His main offer is Instagram coaching and with hundreds of clients, he trained a team of coaches to work 1:1 with the international base of clients he’d attracted.
What I loved most about this opportunity was the scale. He was doing what I have set out to do but everything was larger.
Larger client base,
An international team of coaches, sales call closers, video editors,
Higher price points, (I watched a sales call for training purposes and one of his leads said, “I made $120k last month, which I’m happy with, but I’d like to see that grow.” Just a casual $120k?! I can’t wait til that’s my new normal.)
“This must be what a quantum leap feels like,” I thought to myself.
The only downside was that meetings happened at 6:00am Pacific Time, three days a week.
But I was ready to learn from the best…or what I thought was the best.
Mike taught me all his strategies about
writing bios,
selling in stories,
multiple IG funnels,
hacking attention,
DM sales strategy,
conversion math (if Sally has 10k followers, and her offer is $100, what is a realistic sales goal for her first IG launch?)
and he personally audited my account.
I was like, “Damn! I’m getting PAID to learn this and work with a top-performing team?!” I was soaring!
The first week, I was a sponge. I stayed quiet (no small feat for this chatty Kathy), didn’t share, and just soaked in everything I could. Plus, I was afraid of sounding stupid to this international powerhouse of coaches.
The second week, I decided to share more of my ideas in our team meetings. He asked each of us coaches to brainstorm and share three ideas that could support the coaching clients once they finished the materials that were already published. Continuing education.
Not only did I share first, I shared FOUR ideas, each of which were enthusiastically accepted.
Mike asked me to make a guide to share with his community (which I had already made as a freebie for my email subscribers and is in the Social Media Playbook). Then he asked to schedule a 1:1 call with me to run through it. It was Wednesday.
On Friday morning, I got a voice message that said, (more or less)
“Hi Sarah. I’ve decided to stop working together. I had the chance to bring someone to the team with more experience and I had to take it. You have amazing skill. Maybe we can work together in the future.”
I listened to this message at least three times.
I was so confused. I got so much positive feedback. He told the whole team how great my ideas were. His sales team asked me for the spreadsheet I made, turning his confusing conversion math into a formulated sheet to help them give fast and realistic projections on sales calls.
English isn’t his first language. He probably meant to say something else.
Nope.
That was it.
I was crushed…much more sad than I expected. The profound sense of loss gave voice to my inner fear.
“What if that was my chance to be big and I lost my one and only opportunity?”
I had felt the quantum leap, massively accelerating towards my goals, as if $120k months were just around the corner. And then, out of nowhere, I was off the team.
So what did I learn?
What I loved about this experience was all the strategies I learned. The conversion math piece was totally new to me. I loved that I could see what my future could look like as a coach, at scale, huge numbers, and an international team of baddies.
I got PAID to learn all that!
I had this photo shoot scheduled and it just happened to be the day after I was kicked off the team! It was SO hard to bring the energy .
The invitation to be on this team was a huge boost in my confidence. I officially could release the imposter syndrome because this Instagram expert thought I was smart enough to be on his team, an extension of the brand he worked so hard to build.
What I didn’t love was the super-masculine hustle culture.
It was all about strategies and hacks and less about story and building a narrative.
I felt a little foolish because I told myself I wouldn’t work for anyone else again but I was enchanted by the perceived prestige. I’ve said for the past few years that I want to give everything to building MY brand and MY empire. For a short time, I put my goals and dreams on the back burner and gave my time and energy to building someone else’s empire. (Thank goodness I didn’t pass off my clients!)
At the end of the day, I’m grateful for the experience. I wish it didn’t take a stranger’s invitation to see myself as an able-bodied coach and leader, but it did.
I’m grateful to have learned more about Instagram funnels, sales strategies, conversion math and the importance of those text titles for my reels. Now I can share that with MY clients, but in a more feminine, supportive and emotionally intelligent way.
I’ve always been drawn to these digital marketing funnels and strategies, but they’ve always been delivered by the “finance bros”. I feel like I can channel this valuable information and deliver it to my clients in a more relaxed manner.
I’m a woo-woo entrepreneur. I don’t hustle. I flow.
