How Rachel Bell at only 23 Years Old Grew a 7-Figure Coaching Business… All From Her Instagram

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“Instagram marketing” usually makes people think of two things: influencers taking half-naked photos with branded products — or obnoxious ads for clothes and gadgets that look (and work) much worse in reality than they do in the pictures.

If you sell premium services like coaching, you would be forgiven for completely writing off Instagram as a channel, or treating it as something you only do for “brand awareness.” But you would be missing out on a massive growth opportunity.

The truth is, you can leverage Instagram to build a thriving service-based business that generates six or even multiple seven figures a year. This is exactly what Rachel Bell did with her coaching practice.

At 21, Rachel was completely broke — and by the time she turned 23, she became a self-made millionaire. In no small part, she was able to accomplish this through her Instagram presence, which she leveraged to build an audience and get paying clients.

This is how she did it.

Busting the myth of a million followers

Rachel’s biggest insight into Instagram marketing isn’t a strategy so much as an epiphany. And it goes like this: your follower count matters a lot less than you think. If your goal is to sell coaching services directly to clients, you don’t need millions of followers to build a six- or even seven-figure business.

Case in point: when Rachel had her first six-figure year in online business, she had just 3,200 followers to work with. And that’s across all channels — Instagram, Facebook, and her email list. When Rachel made her first million dollars, her Instagram follower count was at 55,000. While this number is considerable, it is a far cry from millions and millions of followers that you supposedly “need” to succeed with Instagram marketing.

How did Rachel manage to generate so much revenue with such a relatively small following? She followed 4 key principles to attract the right audience, establish her authority, and inspire trust in her potential clients.

4 principles of Instagram marketing behind Rachel’s 7-figure business

Don’t worry about the competition — stand out. Social media platforms are over-saturated with businesses trying to sell their products and services. However, counter-intuitively, all this saturation does not translate directly into competition. Rachel observed that most of her competitors using Instagram marketing were doing it badly. She had no problem standing out from the sea of near-identical content and poorly-crafted offers and attracting her ideal clients.

If you are trying to gain traction for your business on Instagram — or any other social media platform, for that matter — competition is the last thing you need to worry about. Instead, your sole focus should be on your target audience.

Focus on your audience and ignore everyone else. Most new entrepreneurs on Instagram want to get as much attention as they can from as many people as possible. Not only is this hard and frustrating to pull off — it does nothing to grow their business.

Rachel’s guiding principle of Instagram marketing is to focus on talking to one specific type of person. Someone you know will pay for your services. Someone who will add value to your community. Rachel has a very specific image of her ideal client in her head. She calls her Melanie. Whenever Rachel sits down to write a post, she asks herself, “Would this help Melanie?” — and only proceeds if the answer is yes.

Spend time every day getting to know your followers. Do you want your followers to engage with you, learn from you, and share what attracts them to your brand — as opposed to just reading your content? Then you will need to invest some time and effort into nurturing a real community, and not just an audience.

“I spend at least an hour every day just connecting with my audience, replying to messages, comments, and reaching out to new people. It is important that I truly understand others so I can help them.” Rachel says. These authentic interactions are a treasure trove of content suggestions, psychological insights, and even ideas for new offers.

Focus on follower quality, not follower quantity. Remember Rachel’s earlier observation about follower counts being irrelevant? She says, “I am not interested in having millions of followers unless they are here for the right reasons. I’m here to help people grow their online businesses with social media – and I know that not everyone is going to be interested in that. So, I don’t worry when I lose followers or gain them. I stay in my lane and keep sharing valuable trainings for my community.”

This relentless focus on better followers, as opposed to more followers, is why Rachel was able to clear six figures with an audience of only 3,200 — and later, seven figures with a following of 55,000.

Though Rachel’s success is remarkable, there is nothing unique about it. If you apply the same principles to your Instagram marketing, and keep doing it consistently, you too can build a thriving business. And you don’t even need to acquire millions of followers, spend thousands of dollars on ads, or pay big-name influencers to promote you. Focus on producing high-quality content for the right people, for the right reasons — if you prioritize making a positive impact on their lives, the money will come.

While most of her peers are still trying to find their place in the world, 23-year-old Rachel Bell is on a different course. She’s has built two 7-figure businesses organically without running a single ad. We asked her what she does on a daily basis and she said, “I coach coaches”. Can you believe it? And she has been at it since she was 12! So, what is it about Rachel that sets her apart from the rest? We spoke to her recently and unearthed details of who she is, what she does, and the secret behind her success.

Rachel Bell – the Queen of the Coaching Industry

Rachel Bell is a mentor of online coaches in various industries, but mainly the health and fitness industry. She is skilled in neuro-linguistic programming, human behavior and psychology, audience building, and the science of growth and monetization through organic social media. Her approach is quite interesting, seeing that millions of people are desperately spending money on paid social media campaigns. Rachel built herself up the corporate ladder organically to serve as living proof that it is possible. Mentoring others is in her very nature.

Rachel Bell has worked closely with the world’s leading coaches and personal development leaders. She started out by attending events at the age of 16, all in a bid to build and improve her interpersonal and coaching skills. By combining such efforts with her business experience she came up with a way sky-rocket herself beyond the competition. She is the founder of Online Coach Accelerator (OCA), a business mentorship program that helps expert coaches create 6 figure online businesses. In 2018 alone, Rachel was able to help OCA students achieve a 90% success rate. To put it better, almost every student was able to generate their projected income by getting clients using Rachel Bell’s ingenious tactics. Rachel Bell goes down in history as the coach who helped more than 15 online coaches generate over $10,000 online in just three months. All these coaches were in the Online Coach Accelerator at the time.

Rachel’s Place in the World

Everyone is ever looking for a place in the world where they can rule. Having known Rachel, it is safe to say that she has already found hers. Somewhere in our conversation, she said, “All roads lead to Online Coach Accelerator.” We asked her why, and she added, “We have so many students who are disappointed with other business programs. Even though the business program marketing might say all the right things, the students are left feeling disappointed, overwhelmed, and lost. But when they actually see the insane success rates within Online Coach Accelerator, they see how we have been able to excel beyond every other program on the market.” Rachel’s place in the world is, however, not only the number one trainer of online coaches, but she is also a role model for young girls who also want to find their purpose.

What the Future looks like for Rachel Bell

It looks like Rachel is just getting started. In a world where everyone is looking for solutions to problems, she has placed herself as the ultimate go-to person and everything is working out for her. Rachel is looking to make more impact in the world by reaching more people and helping them to achieve their goals. Having found her own route to stardom, you can be sure there is still more to come. People already call her the Queen of the Coaching Industry and it looks like the crown is not going to leave her palace any time soon.

Rachel’s success presents a challenge to all young aspiring entrepreneurs. If she could achieve so much in so short a time, then you could do it too. To the people trying to become social media influencers or to grow the social media presence of their businesses, Rachel Bell proves that you don’t have to spend money to pay for campaigns that sometimes don’t even work. One of the most valuable lessons anyone can learn from Rachel is that with the right mindset, it is possible to make a difference in the world.

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