Daria Astanaeva. Photo: Kateland Clarke for Thinkific
In this edition, we're featuring Daria Astanaeva, a personal branding coach who helps service providers scale their businesses by increasing their impact on Instagram.
In this edition, we're featuring Daria Astanaeva, a personal branding coach who helps service providers scale their businesses by increasing their impact on Instagram.
Daria's entrepreneurial drive emerged from her time in the social media and influencer marketing space, where she noticed a gap in the market for personal branding guidance for non-influencer entrepreneurs. Born from her own struggle to find effective strategies for attracting clients on Instagram, she was inspired to create her own course,IG Wealth Academy.
Below, Daria shares her journey of building a thriving online education and coaching business, the importance of knowing your worth, and how embracing "failure" can lead to success.
Your signature course, IG Wealth Academy, has helped many learn how to leverage Instagram to grow a profitable business. What made you decide to create and sell this course?
In full transparency, I created this course for myself in 2022. When I just started my business, I felt so lost and confused about how to get clients, what to post on Instagram to grow vs. to sell, and how to get more leads.
I felt like there were so many incredible programs out there for established businesses, but where would someone like me, who was trying to get their first 10 clients, go? This is why I created IG Wealth Academy: to make sure that any service provider of any level has a library of resources they can come to, that would take them from A to Z in their social media client conversion journey.
With her course, Daria aims to help service providers attract high-paying clients on Instagram.
What’s your launch and sales strategy? How did you make your first course sales?
I've built a funnel that takes customers from a free product they interact with to this signature course. A funnel doesn’t have to be anything fancy. I built mine with Thinkific’s Free Preview, and I love that it offers a timely discount to anyone who’s interacted with it.
My free preview is a free workshop, IG Growth for Sales Under 10k Followers, that breaks down the steps someone needs to take to grow on Instagram and convert their followers into clients. My leads go to this workshop either directly from my social media as I advertise it on Instagram, or through another freebie, a free checklist, that I also promote on social.
But this is what I have running right now, after launching this course a year ago. When I first launched, the biggest sales driver was showing the behind-the-scenes process to generate demand. For two months before the course launched, I was actively talking about it on my social media, showing the process of me recording classes, creating guides, organizing the frameworks – and me being genuinely excited about it. The more I talked about it, the more my audience knew that this was something I was working on, and the more they wanted to buy it. To get your first sale for your course, you just need to be the one talking about it all the time.
“To get your first sale for your course, you just need to be the one talking about it all the time.”
“To get your first sale for your course, you just need to be the one talking about it all the time.”
Let’s talk about your 1:1 coaching services. How do you price your different offers?
I work with someone for a duration of two or five months to help them build their personal brand on social media and increase their sales. It’s basically the same thing I share in my course, but I’d tailor the strategy to the business owner’s specific needs.
When I just started offering 1:1 coaching, I decided to do a test run and offered a lower price to three people. Once those three people were converted into clients, I decided to offer the next three people a 25% increased price and see if they’d convert – and they did.
When trying to figure out your pricing, focus on what kind of value you’re delivering to someone. In my messaging, I focus on communicating what my clients will potentially get by working with me, not how many meetings we’ll have or how many messages they can send me. Focus on the value of your service, and you’ll have no problem increasing your price!
What does success look like for you, and what kind of impact do you hope to have?
I recently celebrated working with 120 clients across North America.For me, the results of my clients are the biggest success metric. Seeing them gain more confidence to show up authentically online and talk about the incredible businesses they are building is the highest form of reward.
You’ve been open to sharing both the ups and downs of running your own business online. How has your definition of "failure" evolved throughout your entrepreneurial journey?
I don’t believe in failure, simply because I fail at something every single day. The goal for me, however, is to fail as fast as possible, because each failure is going to get me closer to my big win.
I thrive on trying new things and implementing new ideas as they come, and 99% of them don’t work out. But it’s not about that – it’s about creating that 1% that will generate the most impact for my life and my business.
What advice would you give other experts or coaches looking to monetize by offering learning experiences online?
Fall in love with your own offers and never shut up about it. Talk about what an incredible thing you just created and how helpful it will be to so many people. Don’t be afraid to brag as well – always share the success stories of your clients and your own. We don’t remember the features or numbers, but we remember how a certain story made us feel. So focus on telling the stories behind your offers, and tell them constantly, and your people will come!
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
